La Scarola - Great Italian Restaurant in Chicago!

Finally, after a whole week meetings and those working meals, got a chance to have a real dinner. My lovely US colleague knew I'm a super fan of Italian cuisine, he took me to La Scarola, a famous Italian restaurant in Chicago. It's so nice to have a relaxing dinner after a long day.

 

 

 

I know the dish size in US usually big, so skipped appetizer, I ordered vegetable soup and a main course - Chicken Angelo.

Chicken Angelo was really good. The chicken breast was very tender and juicy, covered by bread crumble. Unlike Japanese style bread crumble, this coating was much fine and full of flavor of herbs and garlic. And it didn't taste greasy. Which most satisfied me was the fresh mozzarella, really fresh and creamy. The eggplant was very soft and sucked Marsala sauce, which was really nice. And of course, fresh and sweet tomato sauce was a must ingredient for most Italian dishes.

 

 

 

The vegetable soup was good as well, rich and creamy, especially the cannellini beans.

 

 

BTW, this restaurant was a little bit crowded, but for HK eaters. That should not be a problem, haha!

 

If you're looking for a restaurant in Chicago, if you love Italian cuisine, La Scarola's a good choice for sure. Enjoy!

Chan Luk Kee - One of the Best Roasted Pork in HK

Hong Kong BBQ is one of the tyical HK foods and most common food for ordinary families. BBQ tea restaurants are almost in every street corner. Although some high end Cantonese cuisine restaurants try to make HK BBQ food a higher level with better raw material, better looking presentation and better dining environment and service, I still consider the small but tranditional BBQ tea resturant the best place to teste real HK.

Chan Luk Kee locates in Sheung Shui, north HK, far away from downtown, but its name is known for all over HK I believe. A lot of eaters travels about an hour to have meals there, most for their most famous dish - roasted pork. Last weekend, I went to Sheung Shui to visit a friend. Of course stopped by Chan Luk Kee to have their roasted pork.

HK Style roasted pork choose pork belly, Chan Luk Kee's roasted pork are famous for its five layers: skin, fat, tender meat, cartilage and lean meat. From the pictures I took, the five layers were mixed and not in order. But it doesn't matter, the taste was really good. The skin was crisp. The fat layer was not very greasy. Most of the fat was already gone during rasting. But for girls, might be still fatty. But the fat is an indispensable part, adding much flavor to the whole dish. The meat was really tender and full of flavor.

Morevoer, the most impressive part was its smoky flavor. As what I heard bfore, they use woods to smoke and roast. I did taste the smoky, nutty flavor, which is not common in HK. I have no idea what kind of woods they used, it's similar to or had the same effect of Texas BBQ I ever had before.

If Bnthony Bourdain gonna film another eposide of Layover HK, I will recommend Chan Luk Kee. Really good food! Really local HK!