“Today I don’t feel like doing anything” (The Lazy Song, 2010)
So I’m writing this in an airport whilst waiting for a late night flight to Manchester and listening to the greatest hits of Bruno Mars. As scene setting goes for a story about food, it is not a great start, I’ll give you that. I wanted to write about this really cool grungy little Korean place in Tsim Sha Tsui which transported me and my girlfriend straight Seoul for a couple of hours and was one of the best meals I have had in a while, but I couldn’t find the words for some reason. Laziness perhaps? God damn it Bruno. You are getting in my head.
“I’m dripping in finesse. It don’t make no sense” (Finesse, 2016)
You’re right Bruno, it doesn’t. But if finesse was inspiration I am certainly not dripping with it. At the moment, I’d be delighted for even a thin greasy film of finesse.
I started thinking about my favourite northern Chinese dumpling place in Wanchai that I had been meaning to write about for a while. It’s the kind of place where the dumplings are significantly better than average, but what really keeps me coming back is the moreish garlic chilli sauce, presented in invitingly large quantities in pots at the table. Vast amounts of this bright red goop adorn every dumpling I greedily scoff into my face, often to the point where the line between condiment and main event is forever and irreparably blurred. The lady whose job it is to refill the sauces regularly gives me the same withering look that you get from supermarket shop assistants when they see you trying to sneak an item out of your basket and back onto the wrong shelf because you’re too lazy to walk back to the right aisle. But a blog entry about chilli sauce isn’t much of a bog at all. Back to the drawing board.
“Don’t be stingy with that big ol’ butt. You got a booty like woooooooooooooooah” (Perm, 2016)
This was Bruno’s short-lived James Brown era. He was doing everything a master showman should. Call and repeat, riding his band like a rebellious stallion and generally being a glorious musical nuisance. It was a glimpse into what could have been before success and easy money led him to release the abominable and hugely successful "24k Magic" (2017), which I loved for a short time before I realised that it was the end of everything good in the world.
Enter Yardbird. It started as a small-ish, painfully self-conscious hipster joint that did great yakitori to a small but knowledgeable crowd, then recently sold out to larger more lucrative premises and started cramming hundreds of people into dark corners to eat the same stuff with none of the charm, while the owners presumably started looking at properties in the pricier parts of the city. The clever, clever bastards. As well as not wanting to encourage this kind of thing, I recently wrote a glowing piece about Ronin, which is apparently owned by the same clever, clever bastards, so Yardbird is out too.
“Versace on the floor” (Versace On The Floor, 2016)
Speaking of floors, I once went to a place with rats and cockroaches on the floor which served some of the most delicious Hong Kong style roast meat I have ever eaten. I briefly remembered it and then chose not to think or write about it ever again.
“I’m too hot [Hot damn!]. Call the po-lice and the fireman. I’m too hot [Hot damn!]. Make a dragon want to retire man” (Uptown Funk, 2015)
Peak Bruno. Just as he realised he could fully cash in. We should have seen the inevitable decline coming really. The lyrics started to descend into total gibberish and seasoned casher-inner Mark Ronson made an appearance. Mark Ronson should be a Hong Kong landlord. Smells success, swoops in to get a piece of the action and then kills the goose that laid the golden egg.
It is people like Mark Ronson that are directly responsible for the death of Yat Lok in Tai Po – which was notable for some of the greatest non-cockroach or rat infested Hong Kong roast meat I have ever eaten. Fucking Mark Ronson. I am now too angry to continue extolling the virtues of the recently shuttered Yat Lok.
“You make me feel like I’ve been locked out of heaven for too long” (Locked Out Of Heaven, 2012)
Oh Bruno, you little tease. Just when you thought Mark Ronson had gone and ruined everything that is good in the world, you hit me up with a banger. It isn’t “Runaway Baby” or “Gorilla”, which we can all agree is your finest work, but you have still got it you bloody beauty, Bruno. This song is ostensibly about Bruno wanting to have sex with a girl and enjoying it (really enjoying it) when she does finally “open up her gates so [he] can finally see the light”. While parents everywhere reconsider letting their kids listen to this song, it has finally given me the inspiration to tell you a story about a different place which has an uninviting entrance but makes you feel very comfortable inside. I’m sure Bruno would approve.
As I have used most of my laptop battery making increasingly niche references to Bruno Mars songs, this is going to have to be fairly brief. Doraya in Causeway Bay is a small Japanese restaurant with its entrance facing onto one of those massive roads which means, when you walk towards it, you are constantly chewing down warm Hong Kong bus fart. It is so tiny and popular you also tend to have to spend a lot of time outside waiting in a numbered queuing system (no call-backs and waiting at a nearby bar for these guys) eating further bus farts. But when you’re inside, it’s a little gem. All of the options are a variation on the same theme – raw or cooked fish on a bowl of warm Japanese sushi rice, and a few other little joys (steamed egg, salad, a better than average miso soup) on the side. It’s not fancy, but the quality and variety of the fish is significantly above the usual AND its typically under $200 a head, making it pretty freaking baller in my books. So, if, like me, you spend a disproportionate amount of your time trying to find last minute venues for quick, healthy, inexpensive and delicious weeknight suppers with friends, this one needs to be on your list. “That’s what I like” (2017). Thanks Bruno.