Food Adventures – SUSTAINABLE STACKS
Chow down on burgers with a conscience in Hong Kong
Packed with sustainably sourced ingredients, new joint Boy n Burger professes to offer “Better Burgers for Everyone” from its Wan Chai location. The brand’s menu features 20-day salt moss-aged grass and wild cereal grain-fed, antibiotic free beef. Bringing sustainability to the burger chain model, all vegetables are sourced from local farms and meat, seafood and dairy items are all entirely traceable. The signature Bobby Burger features two hand-crafted beef patties, pickles & house sauce, and is served with onion, tomato and lettuce all grown in Hong Kong.
Beef and Liberty uses Australian grass-fed beef patties free from hormones and antibiotics in all its burgers, including its Bacon Cheese, which drapes nitrate-free streaky bacon on top of its burger. It has a separate sustainable sister brand, Leaves & Liberty, with menu items including the Karana Jack stack with home-made quinoa patty and Karana whole-plant pulled pork. You can make any burger Impossible and vegan buns are available on request.
Conscious sourcing, sustainability and connecting with nature are the three cornerstones of Treehouse, which is located at H Code and BaseHall in Central. The restaurant’s plant-based burgers look just like the real thing: go Forest (beet & roasted mushroom patty), Reef (grilled tempeh and spiced tofu) or Tundra (roasted pumpkin and grain) for a dreamy meat-free burger experience.
Premium USDA grass-fed patties rule at Moo Moo Burger, where custom-made buns are buttered hourly and burgers are produced on demand. The Classic Moo features a Premium Angus beef patty with cheese, MooMoo sauce, tomato and lettuce while the Mush Moo features the same patty with white mushroom, cheese, tomato and honey mustard mayo.
AO DAI SHOPPING
GET KITTED OUT IN THIS CLASSIC VIETNAMESE DRESS
A great place to pick up this figure-hugging dress is Ao Dai Minh Duc, which can embroider pieces to your specification. After you’ve been measured, expect to wait around 3-5 days before it’s ready. Ready-made pieces are also available if you want something quick.
Another ao dai maker with a good reputation is Ao Dai Thanh Mai, which offers silk, lace and other materials, plus options with or without sleeves. You can even rent one if you have a fancy dinner while you’re in the Vietnamese capital.
If you’re keen to browse several different ao dai options, head out to Luong Van Can Street in the Old Quarter, which is a popular tourist haunt. Here, you’ll find shops catering to different price ranges and tastes, with the cheapest options starting at around US$20.
Want to make a day of it? Then head out to Van Phuk Silk Trade Village, where ao dais are made by weavers using traditional looms. You can also pick up shirts and other dresses, along with bedding and tablecloths.
WAR MEMORIALS
VISIT TRIBUTES TO THE VIETNAM WAR
The Hoa Lo Prison was used by the French for political prisoners, and then by North Vietnam for US prisoners of war, who referred sarcastically to it as
the Hanoi Hilton. The gatehouse is now a museum, which includes the guillotine room used for sentencing and the flight suit and parachute of former POW John McCain.
Outside the B-52 Victory Museum is a plane of the same name shot down by the Vietnamese in 1972, just before the US sat down at the negotiating table and pulled out of Vietnam a year later. Inside, there’s more displays recalling Vietnam’s victory.
The Vietnam Military History Museum includes a display of decommissioned, captured or destroyed military equipment and vehicles used by French, Viet Minh, North Vietnam, South Vietnam and the US. The museum has more decommissioned vehicles on display in its Garden of Toys.
Outside the Vietnam People’s Air Force Museum you’ll find a Mil Mi-4 that was Ho Chi Minh’s personal helicopter. Elsewhere, there’s flight suits, aircraft weaponry and engines, items from downed US aircraft and the forward fuselage of an MiG-21.
