Comfort food

The same friend I went to Cuisine Cuisine with last Sunday was still in town today, and this was our last chance for a meal together before she flew off to Tokyo. I could not resist returning to Island Tang (2/F, The Galleria, 9 Queen's Road Central). Further to an initial recommendation by Peech a few months ago, I have kept bringing overseas friends to this place, where the food is consistently excellent, and surprisingly so for such a gweilo-friendly place. Not all the dishes may be authentically Chinese, but each and every single dish I have ever tried was always delicious and well prepared. The service is efficient and quite friendly, and the waiters are never short of advice on which seasonal veggie to order. There is only one problem: every time I come to this place, it always seems to be a last minute thing or, like today, it was a planned meal but I turned out to forget my big gun at home when leaving in the morning, so I never managed to shoot proper pics of the food. I beg for forgiveness for the mediocre quality of the iPhone pics below... (Note to self: find WB app for iPhone)

Appetiser: marinated mushroom and tofu

Crunchy and with a slight chilli kick. Pretty good.

Steamed dumplings filled with elm fungus, yellow fungus and water chestnut

Nice tapioca starch skin. The filling is a tasty mix of different levels of crunchiness, with a touch of celery. Very nice.

Chicken consomme with matsutake mushroom

Simple and delicious.

Stewed wagyu beef cheek with "Zhu Haw" sauce

A staple of my dinners here. Very very delish. Melt-in-the mouth thick slices of cheek, with plenty of spring onions and fondant cubes of potato. A different root veggie seems to turn up in the sauce every time I order this dish, which doesn't matter really because the sauce, meat and onion do all the heavy lifting. MIAM.

Stir-fried pea shoots with garlic

Very nice.

Braised egg noodles with brisket of beef and tendon

Plenty of delicious sauce, and large tasty chunks of 2 types of collagen. A very good dish.

Chilled coconut pudding

Coconut jelly, made with thick and fragrant mature coconut milk, with tiny cubes of fresh mature coconut flesh and larger pieces of young, translucent coconut flesh. The taste was very fresh and not too sweet, and the combination of textures with different levels of "coconuttiness" was interesting. A very good light dessert.

Chilled sago cream with mango and pomelo

Very good too. The mango was sweet and fragrant, and there were a lot of sago pearls at the bottom. A classic dessert, perfectly executed.