Hong Kong is deemed by general agreement the capital of delicious foods in Asia. You, like some other foreign friends of ours, may object to this title as being hyperbolic or excessive, because you have never been to Hong Kong or because you did not gratify yourself with the available fine foods to your heart"s content while staying in Hong Kong. It is highly probable that your native place has a profuse variety of delicacies which you love with lifelong devotion. However, I am of the opinion that you don"t need to worry that you will be deprived of the enjoyment of the foods of your native place during the period when you are here in Hong Kong. You will not be disappointed, no matter whether you want to eat Chinese foods, other Asian foods, Western foods or even international foods. You can be sure that the catering restaurants here can not only provide a great variety of dishes but will also strive to the best of their ability to make you feel satisfied. This is partly due to the fact that competition is very severe here, which keeps the catering service always at the highest standard. Hong Kong is the place where you can exhaustively relish the delicacies of all places of the world. As Hong Kong is located inside the Guangdong province, it provides a complete set of Guangdong dishes constituting the so-called Guangdong cuisine, as distinguished from other provincial or regional types of Chinese cuisine, not only in differences in culinary art but also in quality of products. Guangdong dishes are often surprisingly superior.
Moreover, the catering industry of Hong Kong has been making great efforts all along to learn from the styles of cooked dishes and the culinary methods of other places of China, the Far East and the Western world and to instill new elements into the local style, constantly striving to weed through the old in order to bring forth the new and to improve what is already deemed excellent. The genuine Hong Kong catering culture has not only inherited the traditions of China but also received the influence of foreign culture. It may be looked upon as a galaxy of Chinese and outlandish features.
Hong Kong is a city with gay night life. In twenty-four hours a day you may get various kinds of delicious food here that make you linger on, forgetting to return to where you have come from. The two sides of a street are congested with shops selling commodities and meals, which will keep you company from morning to night and provide you with amusements for you to beguile your leisure time. So let me arrange for you a gourmet"s tour of the city lasting one day during the horsemanship contest of the Olympic Games.
The day begins at 6 a.m. Hong Kong people like to "drink morning tea", which is in essence an abundant breakfast. No matter whether it is a workday or a weekend day, people will accompany old folks, bring children and invite friends and neighbors to go for the "morning tea". This has become a peculiar cultural phenomenon of Hong Kong. Although it may be still quite dark at six o"clock in the morning, meal shops are already open for business. Restaurants of considerable sizes may have prepared more than a hundred refreshments for customers to choose from. Originally, they were only Chinese refreshments of the Guangdong style. Now they are much larger in range and occupy an important place in the epicureans" temple. Some of the refreshments have to be made to order, but most of them are ready-made. Those ready-made refreshments are placed in small steamers, with boiling water beneath them to keep the food at the required temperature of warmth. But there are also ready-made products which are displayed in saucers to facilitate choosing. Just as the Guangdong-styled cooked dishes which are served up for a feast, the refreshments for the morning tea are prepared with great emphasis placed on the material being fresh and the texture of the food feeling wonderful in the mouth. The cooking is carried out by steaming until the food is done and by frying for a short time so as to keep the original taste of the food itself. Refreshments are small in quantity but refined in workmanship. The underlying philosophy is to enable the consumer to taste in one meal as many kinds of food as possible and enjoy different flavors at the same time.
There are many places in Hong Kong which supply morning tea. The Meixin Palace is absolutely worthy of recommendation. It has a spacious and magnificent hall which is nearly always packed with customers. Waiters with pushcarts move about in the narrow gaps between the dining tables. Every customer may choose his snack and take it direct from the pushcart. The food supplied is exquisite in taste and flavor, which are rarely met with elsewhere. If you go there with five or six friends you may try to have a portion of everything. If there are only two or three persons of you, it would be better to choose those pastries which bear the trade name of the establishment and, therefore, have characteristic features, such as shrimp dumplings, black-pepper beefsteaks, steamed spareribs in fermented soya-bean milk, and various kinds of Guangdong-styled pies and cakes.
In short, a pot of fragrant tea and a few cage-like steamers of Guangdong-styled pastry of fine workmanship will afford you great pleasure if you take this as your breakfast. The morning tea is certainly a good opportunity for communicating with your friends besides enjoying the good taste and the feeling of leisure and elegance.
After taking the rich and pleasant tea, let"s go shopping extravagantly around the city. Now you may feel tired out. Why don"t we seek a nice place and drink a glass of cool beverage? Let"s find a shop of sweet foods and drinks and see what enjoyment it can give us. WhatĄŻs your idea?
It is by no means exaggeration to say that Hong Kong is the world of sweet foods and drinks. They are sold on big streets and in small alleys, where you can buy them in cool-tea shops.
There are two shops of considerable scale with Chinese names of "Xu Liu Shan" and "Guo Liu Xiang" respectively, which are hard for foreign consumers to keep in mind. We may go there to take a look. Then we"ll visit some wineshops, where master chefs prepare the sweet foods and drinks of different countries, which are remarkable not only for their great variety in styles and breadth of fashion, but also for their creativity in design and purity of taste. Besides the delicious taste, the sweet foods and drinks of Hong Kong flaunt labels concerned with the improvement of health, such as moistening of lungs, beautification of complexion, giving you a lift, dispelling the cold, and replenishing your vitality. The implication is that you may relish the good taste and improve your health simultaneously. There are many benefits to be gained in one swoop. Before you have decided on your choice, I"ll recommend to you a particular item: Yi Shun double-skin milk. The price is 18 Yuan a bowl. Although it is expensive, you still need to have it. Because it is really wonderful in taste. Raise a spoonful of the milk to your lips and take several sips of it. The aroma of the milk will propagate in your mouth slowly until it fills all your sense organs and then disperse imperceptibly like a dream that has come and gone. You must hurry. Take another spoonful of the milk!
There are two types of the double-skin milk: frozen and heated. You must make a point of ordering the frozen type. The slightly wrinkled layer of milk skin on the top is the quintessence of the delicacy in its entirety. The pleasant aroma of the milk is strong enough to remain around your tongue for three days before disappearing completely.
The location you may need to remember is Causeway bay. The complete name of the enterprise is Yi shun Milk Company. As a matter of fact, it is no more than a snack bar. |
