Dinner at Tung Fong

Rocky and Mayur have ventured out to explore food from all parts of India and curate videos on Askme.com. I'm contributing my part by relishing my favorite dishes at  Tung Fong and sharing my views with you all!

You can also upload your video review on AskMe and stand a chance to meet Rocky and Mayur.

We were at a fix on where to go for our office anniversary dinner. Last two years it has been Arsalan. This year we wanted a change of taste. We wanted to go to some place which is easy to reach by public transport after a hard day’s work. After exploring a lot of options- including a popular new gen Mughlai stop near Deshapriya Park and a relatively new multicuisine restaurant  at Park Street, we zeroed in on two names on Park Street- the just-opened Barbecue Nation near Camac Street crossing and Tung Fong near Free School Street crossing. The scale finally tilted to Tung Fong as we’ve been to the other one a couple of times in the last few years and it didn’t mean anything new to us.

Tung Fong is a leading name in the Chinese cuisine in Kolkata, run by Ms Monica Liu who also helms the popular Chinese restaurants Beijing and Kim Ling in Chinatown at Tangra and Mandarin at Southern Avenue.

As we were waiting for some of our colleagues, I went in with one to keep a table. The waiting area is adequate and nicely done.  It is a spacious restaurant (and bar) decorated classic style.

Butter Fried Chicken, Chili/ Garlic Pepper Fish and Tung Fong Fried Prawn were ordered as starters. Butter Fried Chicken was chicken fingers fried in thin batter and served with sautéed vegetables. The tender fingers made for a good start and went well with the sweet chili sauce and green chili sauce kept on the table, but the chicken was a tad too salty. The fish dish was better- succulent fish encased in a crisp coat of crumbs. The prawn topped the charts. Juicy prawn in a super crunchy crust.

Butter Fried Chicken

Tung Fong Fried Prawn

All were ordered again on popular feedback. The chicken this time was perfect. The fish was softer, not crunchy and tasted even better. The prawn was equally good. My recommendation goes for all three. Starter is definitely a strength of this place.

We took fresh lime soda, whisky and vodka to go with the starters (and not the other way round). Drinks complement the food in our office outings.

Soup came next. The Non-veg Thai Soup tasted average to me. I found it a little too sour for my palate. The shredded chicken in it was also not much appealing.

We came pretty early for dinner, at eight-ish. The occupancy was not high then and it was pretty calm. Saw a few young couples, a young group and one/ two families. The occupancy was rising with time as more families were coming in. The buzz went up a bit, thanks to the little ones. Nevertheless, this is definitely one place where you can have a dinner with friends or family with peace of mind.

Time for mains. We ordered vegetable fried rice (for an odd man out in the whole group of meat lovers), mixed fried rice and mixed rice noodles. As sides we chose Shanghai Fish, Szechwan Chicken and Smoked Lamb. I opted for the mixed fried rice and found it good. Nothing special. Tried the Szechwan Chicken to go with it first.  Tender chicken pieces in a thick, tangy gravy. The chicken tasted good, but the gravy was a wee bit too sour for me. I had expected it to be a little more pungent.

 Mixed Fried Rice and Szechwan Chicken

Took the Shanghai Fish next. The fish was soft and tasty, but the gravy tasted a bit suspiciously similar to the chicken’s. This is one phenomenon I have found in quite a few Chinese restaurants in the city. The smoked lamb was a disappointment! It was very dry and nothing to talk on the taste front.

We rounded off with a yummy hot choco brownie on a bed of ice cream.

A pleasing dinner! Would like to come back especially for the tempting starters.

#AskmeFood #TungFongKolkata #Chinesefoodkolkata #Chineserestaurant #KolkataChinese #ParkStreet #ParkStreetfood

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The Ask Me Foodies Meet-up

Ask Me is the newbie in online local search space. It differentiates itself by marrying deals, classified ads and e-commerce along with a dial-in service on a single web platform called www.askme.com. It calls itself “A disruptive new age consumer brand” which “Helps users to have access to hyper-local information 24X7”.

As food is no. 1 search category on Ask Me and happens to be a wonderfully interactive topic, to create buzz the Ask Me team has been holding meet-ups with local foodies in various cities, starting with and Jaipur. The Kolkata leg, which was the thirteenth in the series, was held on 12^th July at The Corner Courtyard. A large bunch of foodies (food bloggers, Zomato reviewers, members of Facebook group Kolkata Foodies etc) gathered to attend it on the Sunday afternoon.

To make it effective, the event was designed with was more of a mix of interaction and interesting contests than one-sided brand talk. The innovative décor of the venue (recreating an old house with courtyard, where it was actually held, decorated with bookracks and nice wall pieces, with old world charm all over it) helped make it informal and let the audience feel at ease. Randeep Kaur, Senior Manager Marketing (who sent out email invitations herself) helmed the presentation and she kept joking about making the ‘boring’ presentation ‘short’. Well, boring it was not; on the contrary, colourful and informative in a precise manner.

Let’s see what’s in Ask Me for a visitor. It’s primarily a local search service, so you can search for anything like contact details of mobile phone and electronic goods dealers, salons, professional institutes, restaurants and clinics. To engage with its target audience, it has built communities of popular topics- Fashion, travel, wellness, education, gadgets and weddings. They are packed with useful information and interactivity. For example the Fashion community lets a member create lookbooks, upload blogs, images, contextual videos; Travel talks about Bollywood travel destinations, i.e. locations where popular Hindi movies were shot, travel deals; Education has expert hangouts and Wedding has planning tools. It is also a deal aggregator, so you can find select deals from various sources featuring. Visit the site to find out more.  

The site lists more than 2 lakh restaurants & food joints and is present in more than 150

cities in with over 5.5 million listings. They claimed that there are many cities which were yet to have a Zomato and footprint.

To hook foodies they have soft launched a Food Ambassador programme (It’s not yet launched online). Here a foodie can write 10 fresh reviews and get a meal voucher for two and refer foodie friends to get bonus vouchers. He/ she can keep writing and getting meal/ shopping/ movie/ spa vouchers. Cool, no?

There are two ongoing series on the site-

In the Food section, there is 1000 Best places to Eat- Food experts Rocky and Mayur visit various restaurants and food joints across the country to pick names for the list of 1000.  A member can upload a video review of a restaurant. If it is liked by them, the member gets a chance to meet them.

The travel section has none other than Vir Sanghvi helming The Great Indian Safari where he brings to you choicest travel destinations in and abroad which appeals to various travel needs (annual vacations to weekend gateways) and all members in the family.

The audience got served a constant supply of a no. of finger foods (mostly veg though) and mocktails during the meet, including thin crust pizza slices and chicken satay which I liked.

The cheerful emcee engaged the audience in between sessions. The topic of favourite street food and its location expectedly fetched the highest response and it had to be wrapped up as it seemed endless. I was a little amused as some of the names weren’t street food/ drink, like Doodh Cola at Balwant Singh’s Dhaba or kochuri at Putiram.

Big reviewer on Zomato and food blogger Rajdeep talks as another big reviewer Rounak looks on

Presentation over, chef Chayan and Surojit from the restaurant took us through a session on food plating which showed how to present food in a house party. It was followed by two rounds of a food plating contest participated by audience members.

Food plating session on

Food plating contest- round 1

Food plating contest- round 2

A plate in the contest

Another interesting contest came up next where a participant had to taste a soup just prepared by the chefs and list out its ingredients. Those with most no. correct entries won.

It ended with a small buffet with live pasta (vegetarian again!) and cakes (cheesecake and chocolate cake). I, like many, loved the cheesecake and polished off a few. It just flew off the plate whenever it was refilled.

 The cheesecake

Overall an engaging meet-up where I met new foodies and foodie friends and had a good time over food. Looking forward to the online experience.

#Askme  #AskmeFoodiesMeetup

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