eats

Food is a big part of Asian culture, and I felt like in Hong Kong, we were able to find just about anything. Of all the places we went, HK was the mixing pot - we had classic Cantonese fare one day, and Belgian frites the next. The only thing that was difficult to find was good coffee (according to Matt; I don't drink the stuff).

My favorite was the seafood. In particular, our meal at Rainbow restaurant on Lamma Island scores big points for the freshness of its fish (black garoupa, see etymology) and the tenderness of its razor/bamboo clams - they were about 2 inches long and oh so sweet. We also had excellent crab at the Typhoon Shelter Under Bridge Crab, but we made the "mistake" of ordering the hottest level they could make the crab, and it felt like my lips were going to burn off.

There was an amazing suckling pig at Manor Restaurant - the skin was ridiculously crisp and crackling. Matt and I have a lot to live up to come next Christmas eve. We also had roast goose there, but I gotta say that I'm more of a duck person - the goose was just too fatty and greasy for my tastes. And there's so much more meat per goose!

Dim sum was good, though Matt's friend actually took us to a place that did not have English on the menu. Unfortunately, despite having 3 Asians in the group, none of us could read the Chinese characters all that well, and we ended up guessing on some of them. It was all good, though, and was nice to be at a more "authentic" place.

Xiao long bao (soup dumplings) were actually one of the first meals we had. Ay took us all to Din Tai Fung and we ordered them with hairy crab roe. Wow were those excellent. The skins were perfect - thin and chewy and didn't break easily with handling.

One of the more memorable dinners was at a hush-hush Sichuanese private kitchen. It is run by a very cute and hip couple, where the husband is the host and the wife is the chef. It doesn't have a restaurant license, and so you need to call ahead and ask to be invited for dinner. The food was delicious and I got a new appreciation for Ma Po Tofu (that old standard) that made me realize it doesn't have to be drowning in oil. Dinner was followed by traditional Chinese opera as sung by the chef which was sweet but a little awkward.

What else? Oh yes, street food. Honestly I didn't feel like I needed to have much of that because we were eating so much. But Matt really enjoyed the fish/octopus balls and random offal stews that you could find all over. Meat on sticks! We got cheap sushi for a snack once and I had a great new fish - "snow fish" - which my dad thinks may be cod because that's how it's called in Mandarin.

And of course there was milk tea, which was quite yummy, as well as shaved ice. Now that was really neat - instead of plain ice that you then top with syrup and fruit and gummy things, they actually flavor the ice ahead of time and then shave the flavored ice and add toppings to that. We got a mango ice that was quite refreshing. Kinda like shaved sorbet, but better!

Overall, there was an abundance of good cheap food, as well as good, more expensive Western food. It was hard, though, to get a sense of what "Hong Kong" food is like, because the dominant population is Cantonese, so it mostly just seems Cantonese. But at least there's English on a lot of menus, and you can't go wrong by pointing at other tables and asking for what they're having.