When Mom Comes to Town:

It means we go to the Indonesian Restaurant in Tsim Tsa Tsui. It's my uncle's favourite restaurant and so we go whenever family is in town. It sits a floor above Granville St., home to unpretentious clothing bargains. At street level, if you're not too late, they sell desserts, usually coconut filled and coconut milk drinks with tapioca. Around our table, tamily members exchange photographs of relatives from our various homes in between bites. We always get the same dishes: satays, corn cakes, beef cakes, beef in a lightly spiced sweet sauce, fried chicken, spicy sambal fish, Tsing Tao beer and my favourite, gado gado, which is a salad with lettuce, potatoes, veggies, shrimp chips and a peanut dressing. One of the servers (either really old men or young attractive women) walk the room with a drum of white rice. This has become comfort food in a city where I rarely dine shoulder-to-shoulder with family members. And so, despite the higher price tag (about HK$150/person) and lack of rotisserie chicken, the simply named Indonesian Restaurant will have to be my local Swiss Chalet for now — but the curry chicken is mediocre, save room instead for the coconut milk and red gultenous rice dessert.