Happy Birthday at UCC

To celebrate my father-in-law's birthday, my mother-in-law decided to dine out last Monday, 5 April.

Since we live in Tsuen Wan, there aren't a few fancy restaurants that you can find. The best are always in the city-- in Kowloon or in HK island.

Fortunately, there are some good restaurants you can find in the area other than those that offer Chinese food. There are still variety of international cuisine you may choose from, Thai, Japanese, Italian, Vietnamese, etc.

So for that particular dinner, they chose to eat at UCC Coffee Shop. It is pretty accessible for us since we can opt to take a cab or take the 310 mini-bus to be in Tsing Yi Maritime Square in a matter of minutes.

Every time I walk past UCC in Tsing Yi, I notice that there always is a long queue. I shall say lots of Chinese patronize it. They wait for a few minutes just to be seated. I thought, when one waits, it might be worth it.

And so it was my first time to try it in HK. I've tried it once in Manila, in Rockwell particularly with my officemates. At lunch, there aren't much people waiting to be served.

Just like how other restaurants or fast-food chains have best-sellers, theirs is the salad bar. For any order of pasta or rice meal, you can upgrade and enjoy their salad bar for an additional HKD 28. Drinks come free if you upgrade your meal.

My husband ordered chicken teriyaki (HKD 68) with an upgrade for the salad. Looking at him while he smothered the chicken, I thought he was more than happy to eat it. Apparently, he does the same thing to different kinds of chicken dishes as it is his ultimate favorite. He can enjoy a home-fried chicken to the fanciest one. The level of his excitement towards that two-legged creature just never wanes.

I was tasked to get the salad and since I know he wouldn't be able to maximize the bowl (you can only get once), I volunteered myself.

The salad bar gives you an option between the usual lettuce and cabbage. The cabbage here is thinly sliced, that for coleslaw. Then there are beans, jellies, pineapple chunks, sliced peaches, mashed potatoes, corns, carrots (I think, couldn't remember so much, there were just many in front of me). To top your creation, you can choose between the thousand-island dressing and Japanese dressing.

As for my choice of dressing, I went for the tried and tested. The one not foreign to my palate which is the thousand-island, and it didn't fail me.

In the salad bar, you really are on your own. Nobody oversees the customers. Here, you can get as many as you want as long as you just use one bowl. Make a tower of mashed potatoes and nobody will care. In Filipino, there is what they call "takaw tingin" which tantamount to saying greedy. That was what exactly happened that dinner. I took more than I was sure we could finish. By "we" I meant that my husband and I shared the salad. Thinking that since the two of us will eat it, we could finish it. But since the mashed potatoes, which were on top, were already heavy enough for me, I didn't even get to the bottom of the bowl.

With the mashed potatoes alone, I was nearly full. My carbonara (HKD 60) has yet to be served and the buttons on my blouse were already popping out.

Finally, my carbonara was served. As usual, it was topped with bacon and ham. It was creamy just the way I like it as it rumbles in the corners in my mouth. There wasn't anything spectacular about its taste though, still I like it. Serving wise, I think it could satisfy two women on a diet.

Moneywise, this restaurant gives value to your money. That night, five adults dined and everybody was served well. Plus the fact that we all became completely filled for less than HKD 400.