Hong Kong Spring Deer Restaurant

We discovered Hong Kong Spring Deer Restaurant relatively late (just last year) and it is ironic because it is right along Timog avenue which I often pass on my way home. We of course made up for lost time and slowly acquainted ourselves with their menu.

Of all their vegetable offerings my favorite is their braised kangkong with preserved beancurd sauce for only P140 and the serving is huge! The kangkong they use is the chinese variety and bears no resemblance to the tough, chewy vegetable that we grew up with. It’s the salty, smokey and savory sauce that makes the dish. The pork spare ribs with chili and tausi (P220) is another favorite for it’s spicy and salty goodness. Deng’s favorite is the steamed king fish in superior sauce (you get the whole steamed fish for only P200), the saute chicken fillet with sliced mangoes (p220) which is really heavenly and the combination of the chicken and mangoes surprisingly harmonious. The fish lips hot pot (P240) is one very healthy and filling dish.

Recently we tried a few other items from the menu and steeled ourselves from ordering our favorites. The fried beancurd with sliced pork (P160) was deliciously gingery with lots of lean pork, tender tofu and red bell peppers and leeks. We don’t often eat soup in Chinese restaurants but we did try their sliced pork with salted egg and green mustard and it was great! I was worried that the salted egg would be over-powering but it complemented the light broth and the clean taste of the slices of pork very well. It was also generously strewn with the green mustard which again bore no resemblance to the vegetable that I grew up with. It was a meal in itself and for P160 very reasonably priced. One dish that we will definitely order again is the beef spare ribs in black pepper sauce. Each piece of tender beef rib was drenched in a dark, spicy and complex sauce that was worth the P280 price tag.

The place is always jam-packed during dinner time but the waiters are very accomodating and always manages to find us good draft-free seats. We often forget that they have very generous portion sizes and end up over-ordering and go home with left-overs (but that is not such a bad thing). We also noticed that they use very lean cuts of meat for their dishes and they use no msg and hardly any fat in their cooking. All good reasons to keep coming back – and besides, we still have a lot of menu-exploring to do.