Bites by Bytes

Big Buddha

When you go to the Big Buddha on Lantau Island, you eat at the Po Lin Monastery for lunch. It's what you do because it's the most convenient, it's reasonably price and the food isn't bad. Mom and I bought meal tickets for HK$60/person and enjoyed four vegetarian dishes, rice and soup. We ate, clockwise from the top left: soup, spring rolls (with carrot, mushrooms and a root vegetable that had the texture of water chestnuts but less sweet), stewed tofu and vegetables, stir-fried bok choy and mushrooms, and stir-fried fake meat ("mean fun"), peppers, celery and cucumber. Overall, it was just OK. When I eat vegetarian food, I expect it to be a little inventive to give the meat-free dishes some extra value. This experience was just kind of half-assed, but when I remember that it's a monastery, not a restaurant, I am satisfied.

I promised Mom that if she made it all the way up the 250 steps to the Buddha, I'd buy her dessert at the snack bar. Surprisingly, she made it and we sat down to eat MORE (oink). The tofu sweet soup was suprisingly good, just enough ginger in the ginger syrup. I was dissapointed that they had run out of the fried taro dumpling, but the spring roll was loaded with mushrooms and bean sprouts, it was a good replacement. If you go, I recommend eating at the snack bar instead of the restaurant. There are some noodles and "fake meat" dishes and at only $10/ three pieces of the desserts and hor d'erves are a much better value than the restaurant where you have no choice.

Captain Vegetable

If you make your way to the Fringe Club patio directly from Central MTR station, you deserve to sit down and eat. That is one long uphill trek. Thankfully, there is a light at the end of the short-of-breath tunnel, it's the Fringe's lunch buffet. It isn't your typical Hong Kong buffet: it's meat-free, has a small selection and is quite inexpensive. There was fresh fruit salad (melon, apples, dragon fruit), green salad, bean salad (with avocado slices on top and Dortios on the side), pasta with tomato sauce, tomato soup, cheeses (I love blue cheese!), bread and a green bean stir-fry. Admittedly, you won't find any ground-breaking dishes here. It's straight up Western vegetarian fare. Neither is it a plentiful selection of say, the Shangri-La, but for its low price ($60 for FC members, $95 for non-members), it's still much less than any salad you'll get in Lan Kwai Fong. And if you're nice, Lorna the cook will sneak you a slice of cake.