Last month, I had the opportunity to escape the sweltering heat of Singapore for a short work cum leisure trip to Hong Kong! Fine, I shall delude myself no further for it was frankly not much of an escape. Hong Kong was equally as hot as Singapore for the period that I was there.

This marked my second visit to Hong Kong and having stayed in Kowloon on my previous visit (P.s. I stayed at  Hotel Panaroma – which I highly recommend as well), I stayed at the vernerable Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong this time around. Most of my meetings that I had planned to attend were scheduled to be held somewhere in the Central area, which made Mandarin Oriental the most obvious choice.

Now for the foodie in me, a 2 minute walk to the Central MTR station proved to be very much useful, especially on days that I had (rather, wanted) to travel out of the Central area in the hunt for local delicacies.

Read on to see my thoughts and photographs of my stay.

It was not too long ago that I reviewed Casa Verde, so I thought it was fitting only to post my thoughts of another one of their restaurants in the same group.

La Strada is their casual Italian outpost located right next to their French bistro-styled Bisto du Vin. Food aside, I quite like the decor of the restaurant – from the wooden flooring to the relatively large dining tables. I could be wrong here, but the decor presented itself in a rather semi-formal setting. But I always say, while the ambience is important, the company and the food plays a much larger role when dining out.

Ah..  Peking duck. I feel deeply in love with them from the moment I visited Beijing back in 2004!

Can Singapore’s Imperial Treasure live up to the ones that I’ve tried in Beijing? Read on to find out! For one, the chef brings the entire duck out and slices them up, right in front of your table. Talk about skills! These guys made slicing the skins off the duck seem like an easy task.