Hong Kong Food

27 December 2010 - 2 Jan 2011: I went to Hong Kong for a short vacation. My bf went there on business trip so I just tagged along. Since the main focus of the trip is not on food, we just randomly picked any restaurant that we came across, without any prior survey.

Here's what we had...

On the way to computer centres in Sham Sui Po (深水埗), we stopped by a Hong Kong style cafe and tried some of the dim sum, har gao (虾饺) and siew mai (烧卖). They look and taste almost the same as those found in Malaysia.

In the same cafe in Sham Shui Po, an aunty waitress recommend us to try their bo zai fan (煲仔饭). It's Hong Kong style claypot rice which consists of steam rice and various types of meat with soy sauce poured over the meat and rice. The portion of rice is huge and I can never finish it alone. As for the meat, there's a big piece of fatty pork, a chinese sausage (similar to those commonly found in Malaysia) and a sausage made from internal parts of pig (we don't really enjoy this).

On another day, we tried sei bo fan (四宝饭) in cafe in Taikoo (太古城). Sei bo fan includes steam rice with char siew (叉烧), roasted pork (烧肉), roasted goose (烧鹅) and steam chicken, with half piece of salted egg. The meat are quite tasty. Although I cannot finish it, due to the huge portion, I like it.

We went to Temple Street (庙街) to try the famous hawker food (大排挡) there but the stalls were very crowded with people queuing up, waiting for tables, as shown in the photo above. Since we were really hungry and couldn't wait any longer for an available table, we decided to give up and headed to a cafe nearby.

At the cafe in Temple Street, we had curry beef brisket rice (咖哩牛腩饭) and dry wantan noodles with prawn dumplings (鲜虾云吞面). Both taste quite good. I particularly like prawn dumplings in Hong Kong generally because they are very big (like a size of ping pong ball) and fresh.

While we were leaving Temple Street, we saw a long queue (across 5 shoplots) outside a cafe/restaurant called Hing Kee (兴记) which is famous for their bo zai fan. Goodness, I will never queue up like that for food...

On another day, we headed to Yuen Long (元朗) for the famous lou po bing (老婆饼). There are to famous shops selling lou po bing in Yuen Long; Hang Heung (恒香) and Wing Wah (荣华). I personally prefer lou po bing by Hang Heung although Wing Wah is the more well-known and commonly available one.

Hang Heung lou po bing has really crispy skin and taste just alright when eaten together with the filling. Really like it a lot. We bought 6 boxes of that. Each box of 6 pieces is HK$30.

After buying lou po bing, we walked into a cafe, specializing in noodles. Hence, we tried their sei bo min (四宝面) and dace fish ball noodles (鲮鱼球面). Sei bo min is noodles with beef slices, prawn wantan (鲜虾云吞), sui gao (水饺) and dace fish ball (鲮鱼球). I personally do not like their dace fish ball.

Also in Yuen Long, we came across a stall selling snake soup (蛇羹). Out of curiosity, we decided to try their five snake soup (五蛇羹). From its name, I guess it's made from five different types of snakes. It's cooked with some chinese herbs and we like it a lot. I highly recommend this :)

We went to visit the Tin Tan Buddha Statue (天坛大佛) in Lantau Island (大屿山) as well. The admission tickets in the buddha status comes with complimentary vegetarian light meal and dessert. The photo above shows the complimentary food for 2 person. There are more than 20 types of vegetarian dim sum to choose from.

I should have done more research on Hong Kong food before the trip so that I know where to look for those recommended and famous food. Overall, the food I tried in this trip is just average. I still prefer Malaysian food.