Rice Paper

> Location : Shop 3319, 3/F Gateway Arcade, Harbour City,
Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon
> Cuisine : Vietnamese
> Tel. # : (852) 3151-7801
> Website : N/A

Howdy people! i'm back to make you'll tummies hungry! haha. a nice change for today's review with some vietnamese style cooking. a total of three known locations (sheung wan, tsim sha tsui, causeway bay), rice paper is a chain opened by the mei sum company. mei sum is a company which opened many chinese restaurants and bakeries all over hong kong (ever since i was little) and also is the same company who holds the rights to star bucks hong kong. the rice paper i visited is the one at tsim sha tsui. if you ever go there next time and haven't been there before, on the top floor of the parking structure to that shopping mall, there's a fantastic view of all the skyscapers of hong kong island! really beautiful indeed.

so onto the food! so i don't talk about the physical nature of menus much by at rice paper, their menu is done incredibly nice! as pictured in this review, the front is a cut out of a wood fence like pattern. what's neat about this is, if you look around the restaurant, you can find the same patterns actually use like a fence. the inside has a lot of pictures. the design give you the feeling of a modern decoration / furniture books you can find in bookstores. a nice taste definitely to the business.

okay, i didn't get to the food there, but lets start here! so if you eat vietnamese food a lot, you know there's more to vietnamese food than pho, broken rice and vietnamese spring rolls. have you heard of 7 course beef before? back in garden grove, california, there are great places for stuff like that. here at rice paper, they title it, "7 great ways to enjoy beef." each order serves 2-3 people and cost $195 hkd. how it works is, 5 items come first and the last two comes later. so the following are the 5 items: roast beef on prawn crackers, beef cake, beef roll, deep fried beef ball, and beef with basil. so lets start talking about each of these. roast beef on prawn crackers reminds you of carne asada nachos in a sense, haha. prawn crackers is the same as shrimp chips for your information. the beef is minced and grounded and tastes roasted for the most part. it isn't strong in taste and is depedent i say 50% from the shrimp chip flavor. beef cake looks very much like japanese style beef cakes. the taste fairly mild and for the most part just the taste of beef. i must comment first that these 5 items comes with your infamous vietnamese fish sauce therefore using it makes these items taste much better! next up is beef roll. yes, i swear that everything on this plate reminds me of something, haha. what this time? this item reminds me of los angeles style hot dogs! the beef wrapped around the cucumber, carrot and bean sprouts looks like bacon wrapped around the hotdog. therefore if that's the case, you can tell that the beef used in this item has a lot of fat. i say it's about 25-35% fat and tendons. this item is good overall but i just wished it had less fat and tendons for a better tasting/biting experience. next is the deep fried beef ball. this item is not simply fried but they also add some tempura flakes around the beef ball before frying it. it's a neat touch and goes nicely with the fish sauce. so that was 5 items and what's the next two? first up, minced beef congee. this has to be one of my favorites out of all 7 items. the congee has a light yet define beef taste to it. ginger strips are added inside and broken rice is used for this congee. every bite somewhat reminds me of steamed turnips for some odd yet positive reason. a very simply item yet i must say, it's very good! last but not least, is the raw beef hotpot. a small size pot with fire below is used for the hotpot. inside contains carrots, turnips, onions, and squash. cooking the beef and using the fish sauce to eat it is quite wonderful for the most part. yet again, the beef isn't too lean and contains quite a bit of fat. the beef before its cooked also comes with onions, mint and some noodles on the bottom. this whole experience had its ups and downs. i'll say almost to above average but not quite. but hey, try it out for yourself!

so out of the 7 course loop we go into the deep fried vietnamese spring rolls ($48 hkd). judging by its texture, these spring rolls are fried using rice paper and not normal egg roll skin. the usual vietnamese places i go to use rice pepper for non fried spring rolls and regular egg roll skin for fried spring rolls. the spring rolls contain ground meat, cucumber and other ingredients. fairly simple yet very good. the rice paper gives you a softer crunchy experience compared to regular egg roll skin. dipping this in your usual fish sauce (i should mention this fish sauce has a slight taste of spiciness to it) makes this dish good. the dish also comes with some lettuce and lime. it's good to wrap it with the spring roll and use a little lime and dip it into the dish sauce for a full positive experience!

up next is rice paper with sugar cane prawns ($72 hkd). the rice paper comes in a nice tall glass. this dish contains butter lettuce, crispy noodles, star fruit, pineapple, banana and herbs. the prawn meat is wrapped around the sugar cane. so this dish is all about imagination! depending on how you want to order the wrapping, you will need to wrap a piece of rice pepper, lettuce and also add the prawn with sugar cane, banana strips, herbs and whatever else you can fit in there! lastly, like always, dip that sucker into some fish sauce and savor the many flavors! you get the saltiness of the fish sauce, the sour, sweet senesation from the pineapple, the sugary sweetness from the sugar cane, and the meat sweetness from the prawn meat. everything was fairly easy to bite through. i would suggest you if you run out of lettuce, ask for more if you have rice paper left so you have something wet to soften the rice paper. for the inexperience, rice paper is suppose to be soften before eating it. literally, it's like a piece of paper. usually you dip it into some water to let it soften before wrapping your ingredients into it. in our case, water isn't provided in such a fashion therefore lettuce is your best bet.

::taking a deep breath & exhaling:: alright! onto the last item. now we have the confit of duck with turmeric rice ($68 hkd). turmeric rice? turmeric is an indian perennial herb. it is from the same family as ginger. usually besides turmeric, turmeric rice is cooked using butter, onions, garlic, onions and other ingredients depending on the desired specific style. the end result is a yellow looking rice kind of like rice cooked in curry powder. this dish is truly not simple. besides the rice, there's duck, lamb, eggplant pickle and vietnamese mint. both the duck and lamb meat were nice and soft. one of the pieces of duck meat was a little fat but overall it was good. the rice was great mixing with the eggplant pickle. the pickle had a sweet and a bit sour taste to it. the rice had a slight taste to it by itself without the pickle and essentially getting the aroma of the turmeric. yet, adding the lime along with the eggplant pickle with the rice completes the purpose of this dish! this is one of those dishes where you have to do some work to get the purpose out of it. eating simply the rice without the other two things will leave you disappointed. so if you go, make sure you follow the rules! at least that's how the dish became good to me =)

rice paper in the end comes with a nice dim environment. sometimes i think maybe it's a little too dim. but of course not so much you can't see anything. selective dishes i tried were great and some i simply hope it had better quality ingredients. i really enjoy their rice paper section of their menu so make sure you check it out! the rice dish i just discuss was good overall and the 7 courses of meat had its positive notes and negative notes. service was good for the most part but could be better in my opinion with little effort. cost wise as indicated above, it isn't too bad. it's pretty much normal in hong kong. in the end, this mei sum restaurant does a good job with the decorations, environment food and non-food wise. very unique and creative dishes you can order too. ultimately, the so so quality of some of the ingredients and the lack of taste with some of the items (too dependent on fish sauce) hurt the final score. it's still a neat experience and everyone should give it a try! a type of vietnamese cuisine away from the ordinary pho and broken rice.

< 3 1/2 out of 5 >