I was recently invited by South China Morning Post’s journalist Irene Liu to a delicious private kitchen lunch at Veggie Palace.

SCMP is the leading English language newspaper in Hong Kong and Irene wanted to tap my insights into the vegetarian cuisines and trends in the city.

In case you missed the coverage, here’s what she wrote:

“One chronicler of the latest in vegetarian food trends is Adaline Lau, a journalist who started the “Doufu Mafia” vegetarian food blog in 2008 as a hobby. “When I initially started a few years ago, I noticed mainstream food bloggers tended to be biased in their reviews about vegetarian food as they typically compared it to meat, which does not do justice to vegetarian cuisines and vegetarians,” she says…”

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oolong tea

This canton-style teahouse located in Hong Kong Park is said to serve more than a hundred different types of tea from Flower tea, Black tea to Green tea from Anxi, Taiwan and Guangdong.

As me and my friend are not tea connoisseurs (I came for the vegetarian dim sum actually) so we settled for Rose with Pu’er and Osmanthus Phoenix Oolong.

Click more to find out the ritual in preparing tea and what dim sum you can get here.

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Salads can be eaten as a meal on its own and it’s becoming popular to create your own salads by choosing the ingredients you like than be forced to choose from the limited salad varieties i.e. ceasar salad.

It’s Sunday and you want to chill out somewhere for brunch. Running out of ideas?

Head to Festival Walk @ Kowloon Bay and check out the brunch menus at Simply Life Bakery Cafe.

If you want a vegetarian version of the likes of local fast food chains such as Fairwood or Cafe De Coral, there’s just one such restaurant located near Kowloon Bay MTR station called Buddha Hut.

I decided to make my way there one afternoon and took my friend, Jessie along. We ordered cold buckwheat noodles sprinkled with sesame seeds on top and gravy that comes separately, when added gives the dish a refreshing taste.
The chicken satay dipped in peanut sauce is not too spicy yet rich enough to go well with the tangy texture of the veggie meat.
My all time favourite is the laksa but I reckon it would have tasted more ‘authentic’ if served with thick vermicelli instead.

This is definitely a good place to get delicious vegetarian food at reasonable prices.

For vegetarians who are put off by the veggie-unfriendly menus at the usual fast food restaurants, Buddha Hut is like an oasis where your challenge is to have such a wide variety of dishes from Chinese to Western cusines to choose from.

After a bit of shopping, I couldn’t stop myself from returning to grab a mushroom pie for a snack before heading home.

Paramita vegetarian restaurant offers fushion food that looks and taste a little too much like real meat and is definitely for the more adventourous food lover. Some carnivores don’t understand why vegetarians want to eat veggie meats but these are designed to lure new converts who have decided to go vegetarian for merciful reasons yet still crave for ‘meat’ without having to kill animals.

For starters, the cold dish offers a selection of sashimi, japanese green salad and snail meat. I’m not really a big fan of veggie snail meat because I find the texture kind of rubbery but love the sashimi, which I usually dip with wasabi and soy sauce.
After the starters, the main courses includes the duckmeat and lotus hotpot. I like hotpots that usually comes with lots of gravy but this dish is relatively dry as if it’s been stir-fried. The lotus root is fresh and crunchy while the duck meat tastes good without tasting fake.
Next comes the beef tomato rice that looks like the typical “char chang teng” dish and it’s tasty despite being overload with tomatoes and tomato sauce that usually make it too sour.
The prawn in curry sauce goes well with rice, not your typical Southeast Asian rich and spicy curry but good enough to make you want more.

We ended dinner with a plate of kueh-kuehs – local desserts.

There are 2 Paramita restaurants – one located in the hustle and bustle of Tsim Sha Tsui on Haiphong Rd and the other in Victoria Tower shopping mall on Canton Rd.

A cafe named after its sports brand. Lafuma Cafe positions itself as offering traditional alpine food from France.

When you enter the premises on the 3rd floor, the cafe transports you to a wooden cottage lodge where the walls are filled with pictures of famous mountain climbers. It gives a cozy feeling and makes you forget you just trudged out from the hustle and bustle of Mongkok.

There are many different types of cheese fondues available and we ended up with the tomato cheese. I love dipping the potatoes into the fondue although bread tasted just as good.

Yvonne kept complaining that the fondue tasted too strong of wine but I thought it’s alright. And thank goodness the japanese curry eggplant baked rice was so yummy that even Yvonne was won over!

It’s a pity the service wasn’t exactly excellent as the waitress misunderstood me a couple of times and kept giving me cold drinks even after I requested for warm ones.

I’ll still want to go back again to try its other dishes particularly the risottos.