1. Overview
Hong Kong is a food-lovers' paradise. Restaurants here are known for their creativity. Chefs often cook the dishes in a slightly different way or add in somewhat different ingredients to enhance the taste, to outdo competition. Sometimes, they would invent a totally new dish with new ingredients even though cooked in a certain style (like Cantonese.) So, for food adventurers, Hong Kong is the place to be.
2. Where to find food
There are few streets which do not have at least one food outlet around. Several districts such as Causeway Bay, Lan Kwai Fong, Tsim Sha Tsui, and Stanley (on the south side of Hong Kong island) have a high concentration of restaurants.
On Victoria Peak are several restaurants where you can enjoy a meal and at the same time admire the views of the harbour and the city below, sometimes (at night) with firework displays in progress.
In Stanley, well-known for its moon-shaped bay in beautiful surroundings, you can have a meal in historic Murray Building (used by the Bristish military in colonial days), which was literally moved stone by stone from Central (on the north side of Hong Kong island) and gaze out at the beautiful bay outside. Apart from Murray Building, there are many restaurants (local or western) facing the bay, where you can have an enjoyable drink or meal.
Around Hong Kong, on the road-side, you can find delicious local style food that many foreigner would not find elsewhere. These include fish or other meat balls stewed with radish (sometimes cooked in curry sauce), fried glutinous rice with chopped sausages, and BBQed meat skewers.
3. Types of cuisines - by region / country
For Chinese food, you can have Cantonese, Sichuan, Peking, Shanghainese, Mongolian, Hunan, western Chinese, Chiu Chow, Yunan (from south-western China) cuisines and much much more. Sucking pigs, roast ducks and roast porks, a common phenomenon in many "China-towns" around the world, can easily be bought here.
Cantonese cuisines came into prominence during the Ching Dynasty when imperial households came to like them because the food was marinated with sauce and stir-fried in woks in high heat. They were a welcomed departure from the northern Chinese varieties which tended to be more bland. The emperors also like the large variety of dishes and different ways of cooking (stew, stir-fry, double-boil, steam, etc). Some top cantonese chefs even worked in the imperial kitchens in those days.
Shanghaiese cuisines can also be found easily. Examples of Shanghaiese dishes are fried spring onion pancakes, chicken marinated with Chinese rice wine, crispy rice with seafood (or meat), eel fried with thick brown sauce and steamed dumplings stuffed with minced pork.
The most well-know Peking cuisine is Peking duck, which does not require introduction. Other cuisines are stewed lamb cooked in herbs, or roast Peking lamb.
Apart from Chinese cuisines, just name a country and you will find a restaurant which serves food from that country. For the more exotic, there is even an outlet which serves Turkish Marash ice-cream (the "sticky" ice-cream from the southeastern region of Turkey).
4. Types of Chinese cusines - more
For seafood lovers, try the "floating restaurants" in Aberdeen, or outlets on Lamma Island, in Sai Kung or at Lei Yu Moon, where you can pick your own fresh fish, lobsters, scallops and the like and have the restaurant cook them for you on the spot. They are often cooked in the Cantonese style.
If you are lucky, find a boat to take you to a beautiful bay around Hong Kong, go fishing with friends and then have the boat owner cook the catch of the day for you. The food tastes even better than those served in regular seafood restaurants.
Another type of food which is very popular with the local population is porridge (or "congee") and noodles. Porridge is rice cooked to a somewhat watery state and then various ingredients are added to it, such as :
- "boat porridge", which has dried squid, minced pork, slices of fish and deep-fried peanuts. The name probably came from the time when this "dish" was sold on fishermen's boats to customers on shore or on passing boats.
- big prawn porridge,
- meat ball porridge, etc. The variety of ingredients available is up to the food outlets.
These "porridge and noodle" restaurants also serve noodles, in broth or fried. A well-known one is "wonton noodle". Wonton is made of prawns wrapped inside flour wrapping, and cooked with noodle in a special broth. Another favourite is beef tendon noodle. Fried noodles can be served with seafoods or meat (pork, beef or chicken). These "porridge and noodle" restuarants are something worth trying.
Chines dim sums, those small dishes of food which can serve as appetisers, desserts or the entire meal, are well-known around the world. Just one point to note: while dim sums are mainly in Cantonese restaurants, Shanghaiese restaurants also have their version of dim sums.
Hong Kong has its own "indigenous" cuisines, even though they are really fusion food, where the chefs in "Hong Kong style" cafes use Chinese ingredients to cook food in the western day. For example, they may serve deep fried prawn on a toast, or pork-chops on rice topped with gravy and baked., or Chinese noodles with prawns topped with cheese and baked.
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