Great Food Hall ReOpens to Intoxicate Your Taste Buds

The Cheese room is open again! After an extensive cosmetic makeover, Great Food Hall in the basement of Pacific Place has reopened. The new upmarket concrete with hints of bronze design fits with Pacific Place’s attempt to position itself a premium location, despite the resultant drop in foot traffic.

The renovated store features a lot more ready to eat options, there’s salads, cooked meats, sushi, Korean etc all with portion sizes and prices surprisingly competitive compared to other options. You can also preorder your salad (sadly not any of the other lunch options, maybe that’ll come in the future) on the new Great-to-Go app that hopefully will make getting lunch a quicker and less stressful experience.

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Thankfully the cheese room remains, stocked full of tasty fromage from across the globe including France’s Mons Comte and Italy’s Artigiana. There’s sustainable Italian caviar from Calvisius at the ‘Luxury’ counter. As well as a range of fresh smoked salmon from H Forman & Son, the UK oldest salmon curlers. Meat lovers will find the beef, lamb and pork from across the globe including  US Brandt Beef from California,  Tasmanian Cape Grim Beef and English Yellow Longhorn from The Ginger Pig. This wide selection offers you the chance to buy the same cut from different producers, cook them together and compare the flavours and textures. All are delicious – but also quite unique.

At a US Beef organised meat tasting in the old Great, an artisan butcher from California offered this advice on buying meat – and it’s worth repeating again. “Decide how you are going to cook your meat first, then ask your butcher which cuts are best suited for that cooking method.” Great also still offers a dry-aging and a cooked to order service.

Also along the back wall next to the meat counters, Cosro Italia offers freshly made pasta, pizza and ready to eat meals. For vegetarians, there’s a wide range of salads and many products on the shelves. While Tai Pan Pies offers sweet and savoury options.

Triple O’s remains and there’s a new coffee counter One Shot offering freshly made coffees. Sadly while there’s lots of tea on the shelves we didn’t find a nice cup to ‘lai cha’ to enjoy with our lunch.

The remodelled store looks a lot ‘fancier’, but also feels as though it’s more expensive to shop there. Take a look, there’s a lot to intoxicate and excite your taste buds.

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Gone But Not Forgotten – Leung Ling-kit

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Tragically on the 15 June Leung Ling-kit fell to his death from Pacific Place during the “Say No to China Extradition” protests. Leung loved Hong Kong and was among the many anonymous local heroes who stood up to be heard when they saw their home threatened.

On the 21 June a memorial was held on Queensway and upwards of 10,000 people paid tribute to a man who stood up for what he believed in.

Sadly there will always be ‘+1’ to these protests against politicians who love China and their own self-interest more than the people of Hong Kong they’re supposed to represent.

RIP Leung Ling-kit – Gone, But Never Forgotten!

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‘Twas The Week Before Christmas…

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It’s the week before Christmas and you’ve got nothing ready or planned… While the festive season for many in Hong Kong has zero religious significance it is a time for gifts and feasting. And there is no better gift that either cooking someone a good meal or gifting them a tasty bite. Thankfully our local supermarkets are all up to speed and there to make your life easy and Christmas a tasty treat.

bc‘s ‘no cooking needed’ Christmas feast starts with a trip to Great in the basement of Pacific Place with a side stop at Marks & Spencer is all you need – in fact a trip to Great’s website probably suffices as whether you want roast turkey, beef, lamb or pork all can be ordered online and delivered or collected. They also offer all the trimmings: roast potatoes, carrots, parsnips, Brussel sprouts, cranberry sauce, gravy, stuffing…. The roasts can be ordered uncooked or cooked and in different sizes depending on your needs.

White truffle and caviar at Great’s luxury food counter

Starter
Smoked salmon: IKEA offers packs of frozen smoked salmon (Lax Kallrökt) $69 for 200g.

Main
Roast Turkey, roast potatoes, parsnips, red cabbage, Brussels sprouts, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce.
Roast Turkey: Great: cooked US roast turkey $120-220/kg (4-6kg). Buy at the cooked food counter including Christmas Day. They also have roast beef, roast lamb and baked gammon if you prefer something other than turkey.
Roast potatoes: Great: cooked
Parsnips: Great: cooked and raw
Brussels sprouts: Great: cooked and raw
Red cabbage: sadly we couldn’t find any cooked this year
Turkey gravy/ bread sauce: Marks & Spencer: $49/400g
Cranberry sauce: Marks & Spencer: $49/400g
Stuffing: Marks & Spencer: sage and onion/ cranberry & orange stuffing
Bacon wrapped sausages: still unable to find this staple side dish in a cooked version.

Dessert
Christmas Pudding with Brandy Butter
Christmas pudding: Great: Cole’s Classic Christmas Pudding ($159/454g),
Brandy Butter: Great: Cole’s Brandy Butter $15.5/42g
Panettone: Great: An Italian Christmas favourite that can be enhanced wonderfully with a can of classic Bird’s custard mixed with a dash of brandy/ rum.

Cheese
Great’s cheese room is one of the wonders of Hong Kong, the choice is varied, constantly changing, delicious and if you’re used to US and European cheese prices, expensive – but what is Christmas without cheese?
English Stilton: Great: $46/100g

Christmas Cake + Mince Pies
A good tasty Christmas cake is a Christmas necessity, especially one with marzipan and Royal icing.
Christmas Cake: Great and M&S have several choices at different prices from $89 (Gluten free – M&S) upwards. Most are sadly more like fruit cakes than Christmas cake which is a shame as the two are subtly different in taste.
Mince Pies: Again Great and M&S have several choices, but after sampling several none are that special that we recommend one over another.

Drinks
Mulled Wine: Great: Shropshire Spice Traditional Mulled Wine Mix: $33.9/8g

Store Details + Contacts:
Great Basement Pacific Place, Admiralty Tel: 2918 9986 www.greatfoodhall.com
IKEA Causeway Bay, Shatin, Kowloon Bay www.ikea.com.hk
Marks & Spencer various stores www.marksandspencer.com

Edit: 21 Dec – Added Christmas cake photo and updated text

Turophiles Rejoice

Great Cheese Room
Pacific Place used to be ‘Pacific Place’ a vibrant destination with cachet, now it’s just one of many malls across Hong Kong and before today it was probably more than a few years since I’d done anything other than watch it slide past in the window of the tram. But, and there’s always a but, while I’m no designer clothes horse I do enjoy a bit of cheese – which, and I digress, is insanely expensive locally compared to Europe. Included within Great supermarkets’ relaunch strategy for the reopening of its 36,000 (no, that’s not a typo) square foot flagship store is the opening of 10 gourmet food zones including a CHEESE ROOM! While locally chocoholics have been fawned over, macaroonites indulged, ice-cream lovers low-fattened – turophiles have lived in a overpriced wasteland. No longer, over 200 cheeses in a special cheese room and many more outside, it really is a bit tasty and well worth a visit.

Great: LG1 Pacific Place, Admiralty, Tel: 2918 9986, www.greatfoodhall.com