Foodie Paradise: Hong Kong

As part of our 2 week trip to China, we stopped off at Hong Kong for  3 days. I was especially excited to try out the food there. We took a bus from Taicheng that dropped  us off at Shenzhen (深圳). There, we went through customs and hopped on another bus to Mongkok (旺角). I don’t understand why we still needed to go through customs, when Hong Kong is now part of China.

We arrived in the afternoon. We went to a restaurant by our hotel for afternoon dim sum. According to my aunt, they have special prices for late dim sum. They try to clear out all the food before the 5pm dinner rush. We arrived at the restaurant around 3pm and stayed well past 5pm as well. We were the only ones in the restaurant at that time. We were hungry, and the food was great, so the only picture I have is from the end, after we all devoured it.

We went walking around the shopping district, which was also conveniently walking distance from our hotel. I wanted bubble tea for a while, and I certainly had my fill in China. While walking around, there were many storefronts that offered teas, drinks and smoothies. We stopped off at this one that had all different types of mango and coconut juices. Many, many varieties! Gary was in heaven!

That evening, we had dinner at Ho Choi Seafood Restaurant (好彩海鮮酒家) . There are lots of restaurants in the area, since there’s also many many wedding boutiques and such around there as well. The food prices there were comparable to NYC. Table service for 10 for dinner would probably cost around $200 USD, the same in HK. Of course, it all depends on the food you get. Now, since my dad did all the ordering, I’m not sure what some of this stuff was, but most of them were good.

 
soup, shrimp with noodles (in a butter sauce)

 
chicken and broccoli (with dark meat!), dried scallops in a melon

   
whole fish, bean curd and vegetables, whole chicken

Fact: there’s no distinction between white and dark meat in HK (or China). Whenever we ever mentioned dark meat, they were really confused. They thought white meat was chicken, and dark meat was beef (or something along that line), even though that’s also considered red meat to them. You actually won’t find any white chicken meat there…everything is served with dark meat. I actually don’t remember what they said they did with all that white meat…

The next day, we went for early dim sum. We’ve been to dim sum in NY plenty of times. Why would we visit the origin location of dim sum, and not have any? My aunt brought us to restaurant row again. She thought she was bringing us back to the restaurant we had gone to for dinner, but it wasn’t. Since the restaurants are all in one tall building, we missed it by one floor. I thought it looked different from the get go, but I think it was a nice mistake. We didn’t have to wait for seats, and the food was excellent.

One thing you might note is that there are no napkins given out at any restaurant. Everybody carries tissues around just for that reason.

After dim sum, we hopped on the metro and headed to see the big buddha. Those steps were killer! Gary and my brother decided to race up and lost their breath. When I reached the top, I saw Gary kneeling. I wasn’t sure if he was praying or catching his breath! He said it was both, go figure.

After we came down, we went to this little eatery that had the tofu dessert (豆腐花) as I mentioned in my China post and black sesame dessert (芝麻糊), one of Gary’s favorites.

 
we all ordered the tofu dessert, except for Gary, who ordered the sesame

They also had street eats, but we didn’t get any

That night, my aunts brought us to a diner-esk type of place. We wanted to try something local eats instead of restaurant food. Those are always the best types of foods in my opinion. I’m going to have to say that it was quite disappointing. The food choices were sub par, and the waitress pretty much told Gary what he was supposed to order. As I mentioned, they don’t serve white meat anywhere! When he asked if substitute one of the chicken dishes with white meat, she just sad NO, we can’t do that! Geez! The stuff they eat are such weird combinations too.

My brother got steak with gravy a hot dog over spaghetti. I got a chicken patty (dark meat of course!) with a (way too salty) gravy and french fries.

The next day, we went to the temples and the marina. At the marina, we went to get some seafood. So we stopped off at a restaurant that had two sections. One for Chinese, one for Japanese. We were able to order from both menus. So in Hong Kong, we went to eat at Yo Mama Sushi! :)

The food was very fresh and delicious.

 
seafood noodles, hand rolls, tri salmon sushi bowl

and to quote my brother: “You know where I had the best salmon ever? From Yo Mama!”

That night, when my parents went to another restaurant to eat dinner and meet up with someone else. We definitely didn’t want any restaurant food anymore! The four of us: my sister, brother, Gary, and I went to a noodle place by the hotel. The dumplings were awesome, and they served hot drinks from these steel barrel mugs. It kept my brother’s drink hot until the end of the meal and it was cool to the touch from the beginning. My only gripe about this place was that the noodle to dumpling ratio sucked. There was way too much noodles for the 4 dumplings I got.

minced pork over rice, wonton noodle soup (barrel mug on the side), shrimp dumplings

Even though we just ate, Gary and my sister decided to get stinky tofu! We smelled the pungent flavor from a block away. We were actually in the area in the morning, but they had not set everything up yet. Now, late at night, everybody went out to do some shopping and have street eats.

street eats and stinky tofu (the bag was so greasy, you can see through it!)

The next morning we were taking a 9:30 bus back to China. We went to McDonald’s for breakfast, since it was a block away. Let me tell you, they have the regular hotcakes and sausage thing going on, but like the other Hong Kong style food places, there’s so much more! They’re all about the noodles!

dark meat chicken with twisty noodles, sausage and egg with twisty noodles.

That’s my foodie recaps of  China and Hong Kong.  It was nice to remember all the food we ate and how I miss it.