Eating in Hong Kong

We're back from Hong Kong, stuffed and bloated from the oily and salty diet. When you're in Hong Kong, you had better throw the Atkin or grapefruit diet out of the window and just enjoy the food.

Even for non-foodies like us, we still managed to stumble upon good food with our eyes closed. We made a couple of mistakes of course, especially in places with no English menu like this little cafe we walked into. The Chinese characters on the menu looked so foreign to us, we spent a long time figuring the words out.

Finally, YK settled for a 'sour and spicy' noodle soup which tasted weird.

My spicy noodle soup was tongue-numbing hot, due to the thick layer of mala-chilli oil floating on top.

After eating two mouthfuls, our tongues were so numb, we could hardly differentiate sour from spicy. The chicken dish turned out to be the saving grace. The meat was succulent and flavourful. In other words, delicious.

After walking out of the cafe feeling somewhat unsatiated, we realised there were so much more better choices nearby.

We walked alot on most days. The weather was cool, sometimes dipping to 12 degree celcius, so it was tempting to pop into a restaurant in between meals.

We were at Gold Fish Street every day. While YK was busy checking out marine fishes, I checked out the restaurants nearby to keep myself occupied.

One afternoon, we went to this restaurant (below) for afternoon tea.

YK wanted duck noodles but was told they serve only goose meat. I urged him to try and he likes goose now.

My Macau pork bun was delicious too.

The highlight of the trip was the seafood dinner at Hing Kei Restaurant at 180 Nathan Road. I had eaten there during the trip with CH in October.

The food's not cheap but is worth every cent you pay. The chestnut/carrot drink is really refreshing.

The roast duck with rice noodles is highly recommended.

The meat is tender and the soup is very flavourful.

The clam soup is very peppery, you can see particles of pepper swirling about in the soup.

The bamboo clam with loads of minced garlic, spring onions and glass noodles is so good, we wished we had ordered more.

The mantis shrimp fried with pepper and salt is another unforgettable dish. The meat is so tender and succulent, and sweet, it tasted almost like fresh scallops.

The deep fried crab that arrived on a huge pile of fried minced garlic was delicious. This is the restaurant's speciality and everyone who comes here, orders this.

We ended up with a big bill but it was our best dinner in Hong Kong. YK said he could eat here everyday without feeling jaded. I would become fat and broke!

Even though I was stuffed, I couldn't resist buying the 'egg ball waffles' just outside the restaurant. There is always a perpetual line for this famous waffle. It was worth the wait!

Hong Kong's cuisine is synonymous with dim sum, and we were lucky to eat some good ones. Since eating dim sum is such a great culinary tradition here, we simply walked into a couple of Chinese restaurants near our hotel knowing we can't go very wrong.

The first one was at Shamrock Hotel. We were supposed to tick our choices on the menu (in Chinese), then hand it to the waitress. Of course, our poor command of the language got in our way again.

Though we're not fans of the deep fried springroll, these, with shrimp filling, turned out to be surprisingly good.

The deep fried wanton with shrimp filling was good too.

So were the beancurd rolls. As you can see, we ended up with too many deep fried dishes (all stuffed with shrimp) because we couldn't really understand the menu.

One can never go wrong with ordering 'chee cheong fun' (steamed rice rolls) or steamed dumplings.


On our last day, we had dim sum for lunch again. This time, it was at Majesty Seafood restaurant which was very popular with the locals and tourists. That's why they had English translations on the menu.

The glutinuous rice balls with meat stuffing was quite good.

So was the chee cheong fun.

The spinach dumplings were very plain. I wouldn't order this again.

The shrimp dumplings were plump and delicious.

I love the siew mai!

The radish pancake was very bland. We didn't like it at all.

The seafood rolls were weird. We didn't like the filling which tasted like mayonnaise with pickles.

The egg plant with stuffing was delicous.

There were some hits and misses. We saw others around us tucking into delicious dishes which we wished we had ordered instead but we could only eat so much...

Hong Kong is famous for their desserts and we had to have some before leaving the city. This was at a small dessert shop along Goldfish street. The cold mango dessert with rice balls was really yummy. YK loved it.

Mine was a red bean soup set that came with radish cake in a savoury sauce.

We left for the airport after that. What a sweet ending.