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Print This PageTuesday 26th September 2006 
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Read all about the Boat Trip here
What a lucky bunch we are, the weather started really quite bad today, but by 5 pm that was all history, we had sunshine, lovely temperatures and a nice breeze.
So we gathered together at Queens Pier, stocked the boat with food, drinks and plenty of ice and went off towards the East of Kowloon side,
Click here for the full story and pictures.
Back to TopInternational Chefs Day 2006
Friday 20 October 2006
“To create widespread awareness and recognition for all chefs, the WACS (World Association of Chefs Society) has declared October 20 as International Chefs_ Day.”
Bill Gallagher, WACS Congress in Dublin 2004
“To celebrate this event, the Hong Kong Chefs Association, in conjunction with our sponsors, will be organizing a charity lunch buffet in aid of the Hong Chi Association.”
Hong Kong Chefs Association, August 2004
Hong Kong September 13. 06
Dear Member,
Time flies and again the International Chefs day is upon us, and we need your generous help once again
The Hong Chi Association, which supports the mentally handicapped and their families, runs a school for the mentally handicapped Click here for the full story and to sign up!
F&B Gathering
Invitation
The Organisers of
Hong Kong International Culinary Classic (HKICC) 2007
Request the pleasure of your company at the F&B Gathering detailed as follows:
Date:
Thursday, 28 September 2006
Time:
Registration & reception start at 3:00 pm
Venue:
Zenses Restaurant
G/F Henley Building, 5 Queen's Road, Central
Guests are kindly requested to RSVP to Alice@hkesallworld.com by 22nd September 2006
What H.K. Chefs cook at home
Want to see YOUR recipe here? Simply send an e-mail to marco.veringa@hongkong-chefs.com and you may be in the next newsflash.
Under Spicy Crab / Chilli Crab Under the Bridge
Reese Deveaux
405
Lockhart Road/Canal Street, Wan Chai
Tel: 2893 1289
If you want your chilli crab the way they used to serve it in Hong Kong’s typhoon shelters before they pushed the boat people onto land, try a place with two names: Chilli Crab Under the Bridge and, somewhat confusingly at the top of the menu, Under Spicy Crab. The owner, Wong Ching-tuen, first opened Under Spicy Crab as a 22-table restaurant around the corner on Lockhart Road 20 years ago. Its success led the Fujianese owner to open the second place on Canal Street. Improbably, it’s the tiny, six-table restaurant that customers throng to. The menu is in Chinese, but the walls are covered with pictures of the dishes and you can just point and eat. Both are open from early evening to early morning and attract a yeasty clientele of late-night Wan Chai revellers, late-shift Chinese detectives and Canto celebrities eager to have their pictures taken and stuck on the walls.
Eating chilli crab is a messy business and Under Spicy Crab solves that problem by encasing its tables with clear plastic held in place with sticky tape. Its napkins are a full roll of toilet tissue inside a plastic container, Southeast Asian style, and it’s possible to use most of a roll before you fight your way through a full crab. Wong will wave a large crab at you, claws wriggling, for your inspection. Cracked immediately and wok-fried, it arrives at the table smothered under a large mound of minced, fried garlic mixed with mashed chillies and spring onions and what Wong calls “secret ingredients.” Digging through the mound takes fingers, which is likely to send a rivulet of chilli and garlic coursing down your arms. Don’t be embarrassed: you won’t be alone. After you send your taste buds into orbit, you can calm them down a bit with traditional Cantonese clams fried with chillis and black bean sauce, or fried prawn with cashew. And it’s best to drink plenty of beer, the colder the better. Wong will provide a bucket of ice
Toilet water in shop fish tanks
Source:
www.thestandard.com.hk 
Leslie Kwoh
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
A microbiologist has warned of a potential health time bomb after it was disclosed that two government departments were sitting on their hands nearly two months after police had accused three Mong Kong fish vendors of filling their tanks with toilet water.
Both the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department and the Water Supplies Department have yet to charge the vendors despite mounting concern among the public.
The vendors have been accused of illegally diverting flushing water from neighboring premises.
The discovery, which came into the public domain Monday, was reported to the two government departments on August 1 following complaints of "unstable water supply" by the owners of two buildings located near a cluster of seafood vendors on Nelson Street.
But confusion over the responsibilities of the two departments saw the matter remain unresolved as of Tuesday night.
In separate interviews, both departments claim they had acted on complaints passed on by the Mong Kok district office early last month, but neither could provide clear conclusions.
A spokesman for the Water Supplies Department said it conducted two inspections within two weeks of receiving the complaints but found no evidence of any shop in the area diverting flushing water.
Finally, late last month, the department conducted one last surprise inspection with police and found three of the 24 visited shops were illegally channeling flush water for non-flushing purposes, a crime punishable by a fine of up to HK$5,000 under the Waterworks Ordinance.
When Water Supplies Department officials questioned the shops as to the purpose of the diverted water, the vendors said they used it to clean the floors.
"We found nothing, no evidence like hoses connected to fish tanks," the spokesman said, adding: "It's up to the FEHD to find out whether the water was used in fish tanks ... there was no need for us to inform the FEHD because they were informed by the district office at the same time we were."
He said his department was "still in the process" of issuing summonses to the three vendors.
According to a spokeswoman for the FEHD, an inspection conducted at the site earlier Tuesday found "no irregularities," but the department would proceed to examine 11 fish-tank water samples taken during the inspection.
She added the department mounted two operations at the site last month after it received the complaints, but did not find that flushing water was being used to keep seafood.
When asked whether water samples were also taken during those operations, the spokeswoman said: "It's difficult to say."
The FEHD spokeswoman also could not say when the department last inspected the premises of the three vendors, though she said that, "generally speaking," fresh-provision shops are inspected once every eight weeks.
"It's absolutely ridiculous that the matter has been neglected for this long. Clearly the communication between the various government departments is lacking," said medical sector lawmaker Kwok Ka-ki. "Disappointingly, their mentality seems to be that a case is finished as soon as someone has taken up the responsibility, with no regard for whether it is properly dealt with or not."
Biologists and doctors also expressed alarm at the situation Tuesday, warning of potential mass outbreaks caused by the bacteria found in untreated seawater, including Vibrio cholerae, E. coli and Salmonella.
Apart from chemicals used to kill odors, flushing water in Hong Kong is usually channeled directly from an intake in the seawall and undergoes minimal sewage treatment.
"A lot of this seawater goes through sewage pipes and so it's not meant for food preparation or other domestic uses," said Thomas Ling Kin-wah, an associate professor of microbiology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Prince of Wales Hospital. "Vibrio cholerae would present the worst-case scenario. If the fish is not well-cooked, then the consumer will develop severe diarrhea, vomiting and dehydration. But it will usually take a group outbreak before the cause is detected."
Ling said the pathogen was "highly communicable" to friends and family members through the "fecal-oral route," most commonly instigated by a failure to wash one's hands after using the restroom.
Samuel Yi Chung-toi, a senior engineer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's safety and environmental protection office, said the Mong Kok incident pointed to a "larger problem" of monitoring seafood handling in the territory.
Yi said he believed the quality of toilet water was actually "reasonable" compared with the polluted seawater some vendors in areas such as Sai Kung use to keep their fish.
"You see a lot of fisherman out there pumping the water directly from the sea into the boat. Between the two, I'd rather have flushing water than polluted seawater, especially if [the seawater] is from typhoon shelters where boats discharge their waste," he said.
"From a layman's point of view, I do have concerns about our health, especially since these food contamination incidents seem to be quite recurrent," said Paul Shin Kam-shing, associate professor of biology and chemistry at City University. "In this case, the government took too long to act. People have probably continued to buy fish from that store, and depending on where the water came from, that could mean high health risks for the public."
Interesting Food Websites
German Chefs Association Website
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