Hong Kong Food

One of the fun things about traveling is eating and enjoying the local food. We had a long list of restaurants and foods that we wanted to eat while we were here.

There is a saying about Cantonese food - "Cantonese will eat anything in the sky but airplanes, anything in the sea but submarines and anything with four legs but the table." I will say that Cantonese cooking is a unique style of Chinese food.

Take away is popular. It is an easy lunch or dinner. Two of the days we were there my husband was in meetings. The kids and I were on our own for those days. I saw a  place near the hotel that had take away so I thought I would try it. The sign for take away was in English so I knew what they had. This was next to a restaurant so you can sit down or have take away.

I ordered a duck, pork, and chicken. It was white rice, meat, and green vegetable. My duck did not taste like duck but it was delicious. Dinner for the three of us for HKD69 or under $9 or £6 - That is a cheap dinner.

The next day we went swimming in the pool and decided to get take away again. We ordered the same thing pork, duck, and chicken. This time we got pork, duck, and chicken so what we had gotten the night before was not pro, duck, and chicken.

On Friday we decided to go there again for lunch -- there weren't many options near the hotel. I really wanted what I had the first time. Since I had taken a photo of my meal. I took my camera and asked them what that meat was and told them that was what I wanted. Yes, it can be good to take photos of your food. It had a Chinese name and was a type of pork.

Adventures in take away. Sometimes you get what you want. Sometimes you get something better than what you wanted. Sometimes you have no clue what you got.

One of the places on our list was Crystal Jade which is traditional Cantonese cooking. J had wonderful memories of eating the wonton soup and so that was on his list of things to get. I think he ate the whole bowl. He loves Chinese noodles -- breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Once you place your order, they put a list on your table and as they bring the dish, it is crossed off the list. This is typical for most Cantonese restaurants.

Fried bread threads - it really does have bread threads inside. This was not something that we had in Taiwan but I remember eating it China and it is often on my list of things to eat. You do eat it with chopsticks and if you want you can dip it in condensed milk.

Dumplings - I love dumplings. I used to get a box of 10 dumplings for $1 and call it lunch. These dumplings are delicious.

Sweet and sour chicken is one of J's favourites. I think he has eaten that all through our trips to China.   I have to say that it was good here with lots of fresh peppers and pineapple.

Xiao Long Bao or as we refer to them in English, Soup Dumplings. They are called that because there is a bit broth  in the dumplings so you need to be careful when you bite it.

That was our dinner at Crystal Jade with a few other things. The dumplings are some of the best that we have found in Hong Kong. I will say that we went at the same time as everyone else and so we did have to wait but the wait was worth it.

Dim Sum is traditional Cantonese cooking. I think the traditional restaurants are large rooms full of people sitting at round tables and ladies walking through with the dim sum on the cart. You just order and get it from the cart. The room is nosy with the sound of chopsticks clicking and tea cups rattling. Eating dim sum in Hong Kong is part of the culture and experience.

We had dim sum three times while we were there and each time we had some of the same dishes and some different dishes.

Char Siew Bao or Pork Barbecue Buns - the meat has a barbecue sauce on it and the dumpling is not thin but light and fluffy. We had some at Crystal Jade and when we had dim sum. I think J ate about three of them which isn't that many but when you consider you get a steamer of three that is eating all of them.

Har Gow or shrimp dumplings were in this steamer. Shrimp wrapped with a thin wrapper that is a bit sticky and chewy. Miss K says, "shrimp, my favourite." She would eat a whole steamer of these but we do ask her to share except for J who does not like shrimp.

Turnip cake - this is made with daikon which is a radish but looks like a big white carrot so sometimes this is called carrot cake. The daikon is mixed with dried shrimp and pork sausage steamed and then pan fried. It does fall apart a bit so it requires some chopstick skills. This is one of my favourites.

These were the barbecue pork inside a bun. The filling is the same as char siew bao. They are good but I prefer the steamed ones.

Some spring rolls - there can be various fillings. There were three on the plate but someone couldn't wait and had one.

Sticky rice wrapped in a lotus leaf - This reminds me a bit of the sticky rice from Dragon Boat Festival.

It can have mushrooms or chicken in side.

During this trip we like I mentioned we had dim sum three different times and this is just s sample of what we ate. Some of the other things we had were custard buns which are sweet, chicken feet which J ate, and meatballs. We really enjoyed all the Chinese food we ate during our trip. Most of these are things that I don't make at home though I do make pork dumplings.

Beth