I had first heard about Hong Kong's Cheung Chau Bun Festival by watching My Life as McDull, an existential cartoon about a Hong Kongese pig who trains to climb a mountain of Chinese steamed buns. A mountain of Chinese steamed buns!?! At first I thought such a thing was made up, until I saw real black & white footage of climbers interspersed with the animation. How odd, I thought.
Coincidentally, Jacob and I were in Hong Kong for Buddha's Birthday, the holiday on which the annual Bun Festival takes place on the island of Cheung Chau. There was supposed to be a parade, some other festivities, and the climbing competition at midnight. As a foodie who revels in weird food festivals, I had to go, mostly to see how they construct a mountain of buns.
We hopped on a ferry from Central along with 95% of Hong Kong island, and an hour later arrived on the banks of the small fishing village. The first thing we saw outside the ferry terminal were crowds of people waiting for the parade.
My original plan for Hong Kong was fitting in as much amazing Cantonese, Japanese, and Southeast Asian food as possible in a 3-day period. I solicited recommendations on Chowhound and did research on Openrice. I had dreams about sitting in a cha chaan teng with Hong Kong milk tea, French toast with condensed milk, and the odd-sounding but comforting macaroni with Spam. Then I got sick.*
I did get my milk tea, some congee, and a nice Cantonese dinner with relatives. But I was in no mood to hunt down new restaurants on streets and alleys I had never been to. Sneezing, wheezing, headaches, and a sore throat can dampen the spirits of any seasoned foodie. The best meal I had in Hong Kong was on the day I arrived, before the bad stuff started.
Jake and I got into Kowloon's train station at 1:30pm. By 3pm, after dropping off luggage, we were sitting in plastic chairs at Victory Kitchen in Northpoint. We were with my uncle, a HK foodie, who had never been to the restaurant but has always seen lines of people outside the door. That's a good enough sign for me.
Native Hong Kongers and savvy travelers know that some of the best food, the kind you crave at 3pm or 3am, is not found at elaborate banquet halls or pricey fusion establishments. The best food is the kind Hong Kongers would make for themselves, if they only had the time. The city's noodle shops and coffee chops, called cha chaan tengs, provide the backbone of comfort food for people who are always on the move, but still like to duck into a place to relax and eat for a while.
Daisanne McLane has a good article in this week's New York Times on cha chaan tengs. These basic hole-in-the-walls, usually outfitted with formica tables and worn booths or plastic chairs, provide a kind of comforting nostalgia for the food and an old way of life. The menu usually consists of both Cantonese staples like beef brisket noodles and holdovers from HK's colonial days, like toast slathered with thickened sweet condensed milk. Wonton soup, another cha chaan teng staple, is something I could eat every other day and not get sick of. (If you can't make it to Hong Kong or have a good Cantonese restaurant in your town, see my recipe on making your own wontons.)
Hong Kong's shopping scene has long been more than just glitzy malls and department stores. Open-air night markets like the one on Temple Street has long drawn both locals and tourists in search of bargains and a little fun.
Located in Tsim Sha Tsui near the Jordan and Yau Ma Tei subway stops, Temple Street transforms into a circus of bargain ware after dark. There are so many stalls you will need at least half and hour to an hour to walk through, if you don't stop. You can get kitschy trinkets, clothes, DVDs, and toys, and even those kinds of DVDs and toys. (This is one of the few places in the world where you can walk around outdoors and see someone haggling over $5 for a toy usually sold in curtained shops.) And of course, there are the requisite Mao souvenirs, for irony, of course.
Other than shopping, you can also listen to Cantopop sung by people at makeshift karaoke stands, or visit one of the 20 or 30 fortune tellers. Or eat at one of the many street hawker stands or restaurants.
Hong Kong may not be under snow and ice like Hunan province, but it has its fair share of winter weather. After seeing some wild monkeys at the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery, we trekked back to North Point to meet up with my relatives for dinner. Even incessant rain couldn't dampen my spirits, because I knew my relatives always pick out the best places for Cantonese specialties.
Fung Shing Restaurant at the South China Hotel is one of those clean, brightly lit banquet halls where Hong Kongers go for both special occasions and no-special-occasions. And of course, we ordered a bunch of dishes to serve family-style.
I've had Cantonese roast chicken more times than I can count, and tonight's was one of the best I've ever tasted. The skin was amazingly crisp, the meat amazingly juicy. Usually you get skin and meat of this caliber only on a duck, but this chicken was prepare almost the same way. By repeatedly spooning the sugary sauce over chicken as it roasts, you can get a glistening, perfectly crisp skin.
Today, we braved rain and wind and trekked out to Sha Tin in the New Territories. We visited the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery, a peaceful retreat with bamboo groves, pagodas, and pavilions to which people bring food for their ancestors to enjoy in the afterlife.
Walking around the compound, I saw that many of the offerings that been ransacked, with plates and half-eaten food all over the ground. Vagabonds? Bandits? How disrepectful, I thought.
The answer came face to face with me once I turned a corner. A wild monkey was sitting outside one of the pavilions, munching on a pink bun. We stared at each other for a few minutes, me in awe and him stuffing his face. Then his friend appeared, as if telling him, Psst...let's wait 'till these humans are gone, then come back. The two disppeared over the roof of the pavilion.
Sure enough, once we pretended to walk away, the monkeys came back and took some more food before retreating back onto the roof.
I recounted the story to my relatives over dinner. "Oh yeah, Monkey Mountain is just behind the Monastery," my aunt said matter-of-factly. "They're probably stealing food because it's too cold to forage."
Well, I guess monkeys need to eat too.
And apparently wild monkeys sightings in Hong Kong are quite commonplace, like in this photo (scroll about 1/3 down).
High temperatures and little breeze did not stop us from hiking the Dragon's Back trail on eastern Hong Kong island on Sunday. Nevertheless, by the time we finished the 2-hour long hike, we were in need food and ice-cold drinks.
Big Wave Bay (Tai Long Wan), a scenic little beach where the trail ended, had a few restaurants scattered between surf shops. Tong Kee, a noodle shop that also rents surf and boogie boards, had a no-frills outdoor eating area that was filling up with beach-goers. Always a good sign. We struck up a conversation with the family that owns the eatery, who told us that Tong Kee has been opened off-and-on for 40 years, long before the other restaurants on the strip moved from town.
You wouldn't think a hot bowl of noodle soup would be good after a long hike in the scorcing sun. But sitting in the shade under a fan and sipping lemon iced tea has a remarkable cooling effect. (AC, you were not missed.) We ordered a plate of stir-fried choi sum (Chinese flowering cabbage) and big bowls of pork and beef tendon soup. What's in the broth, we asked one of the owners, that makes it so flavorful? She brought out the magic spices: bay leaf, star anise, and nutmeg. Also, she added, we cook the beef - lean cuts, fatty cuts, and offal alike) - in it for at least 4 hours.
After lunch, we were rested enough to endure the 3 minute walk to dip our feet in the ocean.
In the US, I make a habit of avoiding fast food chains.* Eating horrible food, wasting mounds of plastic and styrofoam, and sitting somewhere with less charm than a high school cafeteria is not my idea of dining out.
In Hong Kong, fast food is a different story. Famished after an afternoon of shopping on Kowloon island, Jacob and I almost ran to the nearest Café de Coral outlet. Café de Coral has over 100 branches in Hong Kong and dozens more on Mainland China, but still manages to produce consistently good and fresh food. The menu changes regularly and is full of food a person would normally eat, instead of artery-clogging mounds of preservatives. The entrees, both Chinese mainstays like roast duck over rice and Western pasta plates, come with veggie sides. If Morgan Spurlock spent a month eating here, he may even lose weight.
The food does come out fast...nicelhy presented on reusable dishes. As for atmosphere, I've seen a Guangzhou branch packed on a Friday night with young couples and groups dressed for a night out. America may have popularized fast food (some may even say "invent"), but other countries understand that fast food doesn't mean sacrificing the eating experience.
*In 'n Out Burger is the exception.
Café de Coral
Numerous locations around Hong Kong and Mainland China
www.cafedecoral.com
While sipping a Thai ice tea this afternoon, I was reminded of another tea using condensed milk that hasn't quite made it to the US. On my last visit to Hong Kong, my uncle, a self-professed connossieur of Hong Kong-style cuisine, brought me to a tiny restaurant in Central to see how "silk stocking milk tea" is made.
To call this restaurant a "hole-in-the-wall" would be enhancing it. It was pretty much a corrugated metal shack in the middle of a busy market. To enter the restaurant we walked through plastic flaps. There were about 5 or 6 fold-out tables in the entire place, with backless stools as seats. The food, simple macaroni soups in light Chinese broths, were typical of the fusion that naturally developed because of Western influence. (My uncle explained that over the past hundred years or so, Hong Kongers incorporated the nonperishable staples of Western settlers, like condensed milk and canned ham, into Cantonese cuisine. I've found upscale restaurants specializing in steak smothered in a sauce reminiscent of Cantonese beef with tomato.)
