Hong Kong-style Western cuisine

The cuisine of Hong Kong is Cantonese cuisine with extensive influences from parts of non-Cantonese-speaking China (especially Chaozhou, Dongjiang, Fujian and the Yangtze River Delta), Western world, Japan, and Southeast Asia, due to Hong Kong's past as a British colony and long history of being an international city of commerce. From the roadside stalls to the most upscale restaurants, Hong Kong provides an unlimited variety of food in every class. Complex combinations and international gourmet expertise have given Hong Kong the reputable labels of "Gourmet Paradise" and "World's Fair of Food"^[1].

Background

Modern Hong Kong has a predominantly service-based economy^[2], and restaurant businesses serve as a main economic contributor. With the 3rd highest density population per square meters in the world and serving a population of 7 million^[3], Hong Kong is host to a restaurant industry in which competition is cutthroat. Due to its small geographical size, Hong Kong contains a high number of restaurants per unit area.

With Chinese ethnicity making up 98% of the resident population^[4], Chinese cuisine is naturally served at home. A majority of Chinese in Hong Kong are Cantonese in addition to sizeable numbers of Hakka, Teochew and Shanghainese people, and home dishes are Cantonese with occasional mixes of the other three types of cuisines. Rice is predominantly the main staple for home meals. Home ingredients are picked up from local grocery stores and independent produce shops, although supermarkets have become progressively more popular.

Traditional Chinese preference of food freshness means grocery shopping happens much more frequently, and in small quantities, for Hong Kong's population than the Western world. Take-out and dining out is also very common, since people are often too busy to cook with an average 47-hour work week^[5].

History

The cuisine of Hong Kong could trace its beginnings to its founding as a British colonial outpost in 1841. Soon after the colony was founded many British and other Western merchants flocked to the settlement and many Chinese from Guangzhou followed suit to conduct business. Initially much of Hong Kong society was segregated into expatriate Westerners, a majority of working class Chinese coolies, Chinese farmers and fishers, and Chinese merchants. Cuisine was rudimentary when compared with the cuisine of 19th century Canton, with simple peasant fares.

As the colony developed there were needs of business entertainment meals. Some Chinese restaurants were founded in the late 19th century and early 20th century as branches of renowned restaurants in Canton and offered elaborate meals consisting of traditional Chinese "eight main courses and eight entrees" (八大八小) types of banquets for 2 teals of silver or equivalent of a month's worth of office clerk's wage at the time. Before 1935 when prostitution was legal in Hong Kong escorts often accompanied diners in restaurant meals, especially those of business entertainment nature. Opium was also offered which lasted until World War II. For Chinese who were not part of the business cliques, dining out in restaurants was non-existent and consisted of simple Cantonese country fares. Meat only appeared in festive occasions and celebrations such as birthdays were often done by catering services who prepared the meals at the celebrant's home. The restaurant scene for Europeans in Hong Kong was segregated from Chinese dining. Elaborate colonial dining existed at the likes of Hongkong Hotel and subsequently Gloucester Hotel.

Hong Kong's dining lagged behind the then-leader of Chinese cuisine, Canton, for a long period of time and many chefs in Hong Kong spent their formative years in Canton. Traditionally Canton was renowned for its food and there was a traditional saying of "Eat in Canton" (食在廣州). Cantonese cuisine in Canton reached its peak during the 1920s and was renowned in the care in preparation even for peasant fares such as char siu or boat congee. Dai San Yuan was renowned for its braised shark fin dish that charged 60 silver yuan, equivalent to 6 months' wage for a working class family. The cooking in Canton trickle-downed to the culinary scene in Hong Kong.

The victory of Chinese Communists in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 created a wave of refugees into Hong Kong. A sizable number of refugees were from non-Cantonese speaking parts of China including the Yangtze River Delta and introduced Shanghaiese cuisine to Hong Kong. On the other hand, most renowned chefs of Canton, now known as Guangzhou in pinyin romanization, settled in Hong Kong to escape from Communist rules in mainland China. Prostitution and opium had by then been long gone from Chinese restaurant dining scene, and in order to survive, many restaurants started to tap into winning businesses from families by offering yum cha and wedding banquet, while on the other hand, the end of strict colonial segregation by the British colonial government and expatriate Westerners had opened Western dining to Chinese circles after the Second World War. Egg tart and Hong Kong-style milk tea became part of Hong Kong's food culture at this time. It could be argued that the Hong Kong society as understood today was not sown until 1949, and the cuisine of Hong Kong had its direct roots tracing back to this period.

By the 1960s Hong Kong has gone past the worst of economic depression, and there had been a long and continuous period of relative calm and openness when compared with the Communist misrule in Mao Zedong-era China and martial law isolation in Taiwan. The Cantonese cuisine in Hong Kong had by then surpassed those of Guangzhou, which had witnessed a long period of decline after the Communists came to power. The rising prosperity from the mid 1960s had given birth to increasing demand for quality dining. Many of the chefs, who spent their formative years in pre-Communist Guangzhou and Shanghai, started to bring out the best of fine dining specialties from pre-1949 Guangzhou and Shanghai. Families had largely abandoned catering services and resorted to restaurants for celebratory meals. Seafood started to become specialized delicacies in the 1960s, followed by games in the 1970s.

This wave of prosperity also propelled Hong Kong Chinese's awareness of foreign food trends, and many are willing to try foreign ingredients such as asparagus and crayfish from Australia. Foreign food styles such as Japanese cuisine, cuisines of Southeast Asia started to creep into local Cantonese cuisine offered in Hong Kong, which pace of change accelerated by the late 1970s and early 1980s. This gave birth to nouvelle Cantonese cuisine (Chinese:新派粵菜) that incorporated foreign dishes such as sashimi into Cantonese banquets. For the first time, many Hong Kong Chinese started to have the economic means to visit many Western restaurants of the domain of mainly wealthy expatriate Westerners such as Gaddi's of the Peninsula Hotel. During these years, there were instant prosperity from investment or speculations into shares, and one visible manifestation of the resultant nouveau riche mentality in the 1970s Hong Kong was sayings such as "Mix shark's fin soup with rice [for meal]" (Chinese:魚翅撈飯).

China initiated economic reforms when Deng Xiaoping came to power after Mao Zedong died. The opening up of the country gave chefs from Hong Kong chances to reestablish links with chefs from mainland China severed in 1949 and opportunities to gain awareness of various regional Chinese cuisines. Many of these cuisines also contributed to nouvelle Cantonese cuisines in Hong Kong. The lift of martial law in Taiwan in 1987 jump-started Taiwanese links with mainland China and has caused a proliferation of eateries specializing in Taiwanese cuisine in Hong Kong as Taiwanese tourists and businessmen used Hong Kong as a mid-point for visits to mainland China. From 1978 until 1997 there was no dispute Hong Kong was the epicenter of Chinese, not merely Cantonese, cuisine worldwide, with Chinese restaurants in mainland China and Taiwan, and among overseas Chinese communities, racing to employ chefs trained or worked in Hong Kong and emulating dishes improvised or invented in Hong Kong. Hong Kong-style Cantonese cuisine (Chinese:港式粵菜) became a coinword for innovative Chinese cuisine during this period. It was even unofficially rumored the Chinese government had secretly consulted the head chef for the Peking Garden Restaurant of Hong Kong, part of the Maxim's restaurant and catering conglomerate, to teach chefs back at the renowned Quanjude restaurant in Beijing how to make a good Peking Duck, supposedly Quanjude's own signature dish, in the early 1980s as the skills to produce the dish were largely lost during the Cultural Revolution.

After Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, the Asian financial crisis and SARS epidemic gave birth to a decade-long depression of Hong Kong. The boom in Hong Kong eating scene was over and many restaurants, including a number of renowned eateries, closed down for business. It is argued that the catch up in prosperity among populations from coastal regions of China has driven up the costs of many delicacies such as abalone, and many celebratory dishes have become outrageously expensive that they are no longer within any reach of even many upper-middle class Hong Kong families. At the same time, Hong Kong people's tastes have become cosmopolitan when compared with one generation ago. Many are able to appreciate specific European countries' cuisines rather than a generic Western cuisine, and appreciation of other Asian cuisines, especially Japanese cuisine and Thai cuisine has been ever increasing. These has produced a proliferation of many specialist ethnic cuisine restaurants geared towards young middle class couples on one hand, and a consolidation of fine-dining Cantonese restaurants on the other.

As of the early 21st century Hong Kong, notwithstanding the recovery of Hong Kong's economy from the slump in 2003 due to the SARS epidemic, many pundits argue that with Hong Kong's uncertain long term economic fortune vis-a-vis mega-rich cities in China such as Shanghai and Guangzhou, Hong Kong no longer possesses the economic base to support super fine-dining that is required to sustain an active dining culture in a real estate property development-based economy. Modern Hong Kong's labor market has also disrupted the traditional ways of grooming Chinese chefs, which henceforth been trained in a very long and drawn one-to-one practical apprenticeships. Very few chefs are willing to sacrifice their time and effort to produce traditional cooking that discourages cutting corners, and emphasizes techniques over ingredients' net economic worth. On the other hand, Hong Kong may well develop a foodie culture similar to other developed economies and preserve the best of traditional cooking.

Historically Hong Kong's food source came from a combination of mini stores instead of supermarkets. Some of the stores included: rice dealers (Chinese: 米舖), serving as mini rice storage warehouses; wine shops (辦館), which offered beverages; see-dor (士多), which were single convenient stores, most notable for serving fresh baked bread. The main component was wet markets (街市) - one of the first market gatherings in Hong Kong was Central Market that began in the 1840s.

The idea of a single facility or supermarket that provided all food ingredients did not take place until the early 1970s when Wellcome , a local grocery chain, changed its format into a supermarket. Air-conditioned supermarkets did not become standardized until the 1980s. The early 21st century Western environmentalism- or sustainability-inspired food fashions, such as natural food, organic food, genetic engineering free food, local food, and farmer's markets, have not yet been picked up by Hong Kong's populations by and large and there are no signs of any large scale acceptance on the horizon. It must be noted though, that the Western farmer's markets is largely identical with the traditional Chinese wet markets, however support of wet markets are largely based on traditional Chinese cultural preference rather than sustainability, and wet markets do contain many features that are condemned by modern Western environmentalists on the grounds of "animal cruelty" (live animals sold for food) and "high food miles" (fruits from North America).

Eating habits

Most restaurant serving sizes are considerably small by international standards, especially in comparison to most Western nations like the United States or Canada. The main course is usually accompanied by a generous portion of carbohydrates such as rice or mein(noodles). People generally eat 5 times a day^[1]. Dinner is often accompanied with dessert. Snack time also fits anywhere in between meals.

As Hong Kong is Cantonese in origin and most Hong Kong Chinese are immigrants or descendants of immigrants from Cantonese-speaking parts of China, the food is a variant of Cantonese cuisine - almost all homecooking and much of the dine-out fares, from restaurant to bakery, are Cantonese or heavily Cantonese-influenced. Most of the celebrated food in Hong Kong such as the wife cake, roast duck, dim sum, herbal tea, shark's fin and abalone cooking, poached chicken, and the mooncake, and others, originated in Guangzhou, and dai pai dong was an institution adopted from the southern Chinese city. As in the parent cuisine, the Hong Kong Cantonese cuisine accepts a wide variety of ingredients, a lighted seasoned taste. Unlike Guangzhou, the uninterrupted contacts Hong Kong has with the West has made it more susceptible to Western influences, and has produced favorites such as egg tarts, Hong Kong-style milk tea.

In addition, other foreign styles of cuisines are also popular in the territory, although almost all offer one of generic Western (authentic, international, or Hong Kong-style), Italian, French, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Malaysian and Singaporean cuisines. Unlike London, New York, Paris and Singapore, Hong Kong does not offer as much breadth in variety of cuisines available as its relatively homogeneous population renders exotic styles of cuisines without sufficient numbers of ethnic clientèles difficult to survive.^{citation needed}

Eating Etiquette

Most East Asian cuisines, with the exception of fusion and Thai, are consumed exclusively with chopsticks. The more Western style cuisines favor cutlery. Some meals are more suited for the use of hands. One notable trend in restaurants is the limited number of napkins provided during a meal. Most mid to low-tier restaurants operate under the assumption that customers bring their own napkins or tissue packs when dining. Standard Western dining etiquettes are rarely observed even in upscale restaurants in Hong Kong.

Ingredients

Similar to Cantonese cuisine elsewhere, Hong Kong's cooking uses a wide variety of ingredients and the common ones include:

Styles

Chinese and Other Asian

Western

Non-service-based

Non-service-based items are food that do not require cooking or any chef services. They are usually imported, cultivated or produced. It is identical if served outside of Hong Kong.

Chinese and Other Asian Styles

Hawker

These are basically streetside food stalls, operated by usually 1 or 2 people pushing a cart. The carts are usually very mobile, allowing the business freedrom to sell snacks in which ever area is most populated at a particular point in time. While they have been popular in the 70s and 80s, tight health regulations and other forms of lease versus licensed hawker restrictions have put a burden on this mobile food culture^[6]. The term Jau Gwei became associated with the hawkers trying to avoid restrictions.

Dai Pai Dong

These are small Chinese style casual outdoor dining restaurants, serving mostly Cantonese and Teochew peasant fares. The business is catered toward the locals with many menus exclusively in Chinese.

Specialty Shops

Specialty stores usually dedicate to selling a certain type of snack or dried goods. If the focus is on beef jerky for example, the store will offer 10 to 20 different types of the highest grade and quality. During holiday times, specialty stores are sometimes the premiere place for purchasing food gift items. Sun-dried goods and Chinese candy are also common merchandise found.

Hong Kong-Style Fast Food

Hong Kong-style fast food is either served in fast-casual restaurants such as Café de Coral, Maxim's and Fairwood or in food courts typically attached to malls or supermarkets such as CitySuper. The food offered is a mix of Canto-Western cuisine (see Hong Kong-Style Western Cuisine below), Cantonese fares, and increasingly Asian food from outside China.

Chinese Pastry

Hong Kong-style Chinese pastry offers a plethora of choices for the discerning taster. Depending on location, some shops may carry a wider selection than others, and some may bake goods on the premise while others have it delivered from an off-site bakery. Most bakeries carry standard fare such as Pineapple Buns and Egg Tarts. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, moon cake is one of the hottest sellers. Pastries are baked fresh daily (and sometimes throughout the day), and it's said that Hong Kong people have taste buds so sophisticated that they can tell the difference between something baked 1 hour versus 5 hours ago.

Cuisine: Cantonese

As the most predominant cultural group in Hong Kong, Cantonese food forms the backbone of homecooking and dine-out scenes. Many early celebrated Cantonese restaurants, including Tai San Yuan, Luk Yu Tea House, were originally Hong Kong branches of the famed Guangzhou-based restaurants, and most chefs in Hong Kong until the 1970s had spent their formative years working in the restaurant industry in Gaungzhou. Most of the celebrated dishes in Hong Kong were introduced into the territory through Guangzhou, often refined with awareness of international tastes. Cantonese food prices perhaps cover the widest range, from the small businesses lou mei to the most expensive abalone delicacies, which involves abalone.

One well developed dish in Cantonese cuisine is dim sum. Waiters cart around stacks of steamer baskets or small plates of food for customers to choose. Dim Sum includes dishes based on meat, seafood, vegetables, as well as desserts and fruit. The term Yum cha (literally "drink tea") is synonymous with eating Dim Sum. It is customary for families to eat Dim Sum on weekends.

Cuisine: Buddhist

This cuisine is essentially vegetarian specialties using tofu, wheat gluten, mushroom and other non-animal sourced ingredients. Despite the name, the cuisine are enjoyed by many non-Buddhists. Hong Kong's vegetarian dishes, as part of the Cantonese branch of Chinese vegetarian cuisine, puts emphasis on meat analogues substitutes to the point where it can taste and look identical to real meat, often by using deep-fried gluten and tofu to recreate meat-like textures, and heavy-flavored sauces are prepared for the dishes. Even committed meat-eaters enjoy the cuisine regularly^[7]. Unlike western countries, vegetarian diet in Hong Kong is not considered a commitment. This cuisine is also served in some temples and monasteries like the Po Lin Monastery. The vegetarian cuisine served in some Taoist temples or monasteries, such as the Yuen Yuen Institute, can also be classified under this category.

Non-Cantonese Chinese vegetarian cuisine is extremely rare in Hong Kong, although there are some isolated temples and restaurants offering Shanghaiese-style vegetarian cuisine. Compared with Cantonese-style vegetarian cuisine, dishes are less oily and some food items favored by non-Cantonese Chinese, such as bamboo shoot, picked vegetables, are often used. Meat analogues are prominently featured, albeit expressed in differently manners from Cantonese vegetarian cuisine.

Cuisine: Hakka

This form of cooking style from the Hakka people originally came from Guangdong and Fujian in southeastern China. The style uses dried and preserved ingredients. Pork is by far the most common meat in the style.

Cuisine: Beijing

This cuisine have one of the longest history in terms of style development. The variety and complexity provide a glimpse of what imperial Chinese Emperors might have eaten at one time. Exotic dishes in this category often require a considerable wait time before it is served.

Cuisine: Japanese

Sushi is the most common association made to Japanese cuisine in Hong Kong. From small cafe shops to conveyor belt sushi restaurants to restaurants specializing in Teppanyaki, Japanese-style cooking is fairly popular. Depending on the locale, many sushi-centric restaurants are designed to mirror close to those in Japan.

Cuisine: Indian

Unlike in India which may separate into regional variants such as Punjabi, the Chinese population in Hong Kong overwhelming identify Indian cuisine with curry spices. Because meat is always expected, it can also be said that HK Indian cuisine leans toward Northern Indian Cuisine.

Hot Pot

This hot pot cuisine, known as daa bin lou (打邊爐) in Cantonese, is unique in the sense that everyone is a chef. A boiling pot of water (soup-based, and customers can choose their preferred soup taste), is placed in the center of the table, and essentially everyone boils their own ingredients in that pot. This is highly popular and is usually accompanied with a bottle of cold beer or soda. This style is common during frigid winter times, since people are essentially cuddled around a fire. This format is also considered entertaining.

Hong Kong-Style Drinks

Non-alcoholic beverages are served at restaurants of all classes, but most notably at Cha chaan teng, a unique kind of restaurants in Hong Kong. Since drink recipes are not franchise based, most drinks can vary depending on the restaurant. Rock sugar and syrup are commonly used to add sweetness.

Chinese Tea

A large wide variety of tea leaves and combinations are used for Chinese tea. In the 50s and 60s, citizens would go to tea houses accompanied by their pet birds locked in a bird cage. Noon tea was an essential break in the middle of the day. Though tea nowadays go along with any meal.

Western Styles

Hong Kong-Style Western Cuisine

Dishes derived from cuisines of the Western world, but not classified into a particular country, belong in this category. Outside Hong Kong it is termed Hong Kong-style Western cuisine or Canto-Western cuisine. Small restaurants that offer Sai Chaan are usually Cha chaan teng at the popular end or "Sai Chaan Restaurants" at the more upscale range. Restaurants that have come to expect tourists will likely offer both east and west menus. Most dishes are localized with Chinese tastes^[8] and contain Chinese and specifically Cantonese influences, such as steak marinated in soy sauce, served in a soy sauce dominated gravy, and with fried rice as on the side, or wok-fried spaghetti with meat sauce ^[9]. The cuisine's detractors term the cuisine soy sauce Western cuisine (Chinese:豉油西餐) since the use of soy sauce was unheard of as an ingredient in Western culinary art before international cuisine took off in the late 1980s.

As Hong Kong became economically more prosperous which drive more commercial contacts with the West and fuel foreign travels, people's tastes have become more broadened and Sai Chaan Restaurants have become a rarity due to proliferation of more authentic Western restaurants focusing on local Hong Kong Chinese clientale. Those that remain, such as Goldfinch or Tai Ping Koon, have become quaint relics drawing customers with their 1960s and 1970s nostalgia. Cha chaan teng has tended to incorporate more Chinese food and remain popular as ever in the Hong Kong dining scene.

Western Fast Food

Western style fast food are essentially replicas of US or European franchised fast food restaurant models. McDonald's is likely the most common. Others include Hardee's (formerly), Pizza Hut and many more.

Western Pastry

The general association made is that western pastry are much sweeter and potent in taste than typical Chinese pastry. Pastry of this category are reciped by western countries. Some western style pastry lean very close to their western counterpart, while others are modified with a reduction in cheese, whip cream and other western ingredients. Chinese Bakery shops often sell both east and west goods. Maxim's is one of the most popular franchise found in nearly every MTR subway stations. Délifrance is another place that offers western sandwiches.

Cuisine: American

These are standard meals taken from the U.S., except with a significant reduction in usage of butter. For example, an order of mashed potato in Hong Kong will seem relatively plain and light compared to its U.S. counterpart. Popcorn in Hong Kong is sweetened. If served in the U.S., Americans would classify it as Cracker Jack instead. Steak can be classified as Sai Chaan or American food.

Cuisine: Italian

This cuisine is usually considered up-scale, following a 3 course antipasto, primo and secondo format. Italian food in Hong Kong are generally considered more Modern Italian, instead of being authentic Traditional Italian. Though if one was to explicitly look for Venetian style, it can be done. Drinks and desserts are often mixed with Chinese options. The main course itself will lean closer to American-Italian. "Fat Angelos" is an example of an HK Italian restaurant.

Cuisine: French

Common French dishes can be found in Hong Kong along with delicacies. Many of the French desserts like Crème brûlée have been modified into some form of pudding (Chinese: 布甸) to be served with Chinese dishes. So aside from being a standalone style, influence of French cuisine in Asian dishes are apparent.

Western Drinks

Beverage from the west have been deeply integrated into the food culture. The line between east and west drinks are blurred to the point where many westernized drinks can be found in Chinese style restaurants. Especially in Cha chaan teng, they have essentially become just another item on the menu. British malt drinks have become closely associated with breakfast in Hong Kong.

Western Coffee

Coffee from the west has become heavily franchised in recent years. The arrival of Pacific Coffee and Starbucks changed the landscape of western style coffee in Hong Kong. While independent coffee shops do exist, franchise stores are often situated in favorable locations that cater to foreign workers.

Locales

Famous chefs

Hong Kong diners are willing to pay top dollar for the best food and service, this helps to attract many celebrity and star chefs to open restaurants in Hong Kong, including:

Culture

Truffle madness

Truffle madness began to take off in Hong Kong 2005 when a group of citizens paid what was then a world record HK$863,000 for a 1.2 kg White Alba truffle. It was prepared by chef Umberto Bombana of Toscana restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton hotel.^[10]

A 1.51 kilogram rare White Alba truffle, was sold for 125,000 Euros/HK$1,250,000/US$160,000 on November 13, 2006 to Hong Kong property tycoon Sir Gordon Wu. This price beat the previous world record of 95,000 Euros for a 1.21 kg White Alba truffle in 2005. Both the 2005 and 2006 truffles were sold in Hong Kong.

The record price paid for a single white truffle was set again in December 2007, when Macau casino owner Stanley Ho paid US$330,000 (£165,000) for a specimen weighing 1.5kg (3.3lb). One of the largest truffles found in decades. It was unearthed near Pisa and sold at an auction held simultaneously in Macau, London and Florence.^[11]

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