I always thought I was the only Lamma resident of Chinese origin from Montreal. Well, that’s no longer the case.

You might think that in an overcrowded city of seven million people like Hong Kong, you would not know your neighbours. This is not true on Lamma Island, a sparsely populated locality of about 6,000 people, where it was in fact my cross-balcony neighbour who tipped me on other Montrealers living on Lamma.

I wanted to make a fresh dish of tofu tonight, and needed to buy a good chili oil. I remembered about the Chinese condiments shop on the main street that my neighbour was telling me about, stopped there on my way home, found the chili oil I wanted, and started chatting with the two owners, who confirmed their Montreal origin. In fact, they were as surprised as I was originally, saying how small the world is.

The lady said she grew up in Montreal, and finished her university there. I was told they were even of one of Lamma’s old families. Montreal has a tiny Chinese community compared with Toronto (or even Calgary, a much smaller city) and it’s always remarkable to find other Montrealers settling back here in Hong Kong. Some like actress Christy Chung (鍾麗緹) and Cantopop singer Denise Ho (何韻詩) even achieved household-name level of success here.

I’ll have to chat longer with these newly found Lamma-Montrealers next time. This island is definitely a place where you can’t possibly be anonymous in your immediate physical environment.

They are called Kam Kuen (金卷), Golden Roll in English, and are situated on the main street, next door to Green Cottage cafe, and diagonally across from Emily’s ice cream parlour. The small pot of chili oil with garlic was HK$20 (CA$2.54), and they said that they had a new variety of chili oil that also contains dried shrimp (蝦米) and smelled just like it — grandma would probably like it. Now that I know that the owners have a Montreal connection, I can probably feel good about buying tourist stuff from Lamma to bring back to my folks back home (it’s all made by hand in their shop)… G/F 32A, Yung Shue Wan Main Street, Lamma Island. Phone: +852 29820812

…now, how exactly can you use chili oil? With wonton noodles is a good idea, and stir-frys too. But tonight, it was, like I said, for cold tofu:

Tong Por, Ville Saint-Laurent, Montréal

On dira ce qu’on voudra, mais le pain à Hong Kong… est fait au goût des Hongkongais. Ainsi, plus souvent qu’autrement, le pain que je mange à Hong Kong, c’est le pain tranché, marque Garden, communément appelé Garden Bread. Les miches sont hautes et font de grandes tranches.

Ceci est un exemple de pain tranché fait dans une petite boulangerie locale, Electric Road à Tin Hau:

Pain style « Garden Bread », dans North Point

C’est du pain tranché, alors bon, pour à peu près 10$HK (1,30$CA) la miche (qui nous dure 5 jours pour une personne), on ne s’attend pas à trop… Il a un goût doux et quelque peu pâteux. Peut-être même qu’on y met un peu de poudre de lait.

Little Mermaid: le plus facile à se procurer

Alors dans les pains un peu plus sophistiqués, qu’avons-nous à mettre sous la dent ? Il y a d’abord la boulangerie Little Mermaid, qui est la plus facile d’accès en général. C’est une boulangerie japonaise (voir site du Japon), mais qui a quatre petits magasins dans des supermarchés city’super. Le pain est malheureusement beaucoup trop léger à mon goût et se conserve très mal si vous vouliez vous faire un lunch pour le lendemain. La baguette se vend 20$HK. Les petites pâtisseries sont bien bonnes par contre et soulagent souvent des fringales de fin de semaine lorsque je débarque de mon ferry, juste à l’extérieur du city’super du IFC Mall.

Facile à se procurer, parce que les city’super sont dans des grands centres commerciaux mainstream (pas des centres commerciaux super haut de gamme, comme les autres ci-dessous), et parce qu’on en fait en plutôt grandes quantités pour qu’il en reste à l’heure de la fermeture.

Robuchon: le meilleur à Hong Kong

Récemment, je suis allé chez Robuchon à The Landmark. Mon collègue me l’avait recommandé il y a quelques mois de celà, mais Robuchon est probablement l’un des endroits les plus inaccessibles pour de la bonne bouffe étrangère dans Central (idem pour Oliver’s Deli). L’atelier de Joël Robuchon est l’un des restaurants les plus reconnus de Hong Kong. La boulangerie était dans le restaurant au 3e étage dans le fond du Landmark. C’était à la fin de ma journée de travail, vers 19h30, alors il n’y avait plus grand chose au comptoir: juste un pain de campagne et une baguette courte au blé entier.

Baguette de chez Robuchon à Hong Kong

Une baguette dense et moelleuse!

Le pain que j’ai acheté 14$HK était juste suffisant pour me faire un sandwich au saucisson et camembert, et il était certainement le meilleur que j’ai acheté jusqu’à ce jour à Hong Kong (Celui de Première Moisson à Montréal est probablement un peu mieux). La baguette ordinaire était toute vendue, mais habituellement à 20$HK. Celle que j’ai acheté, qu’on m’a dit être de blé entier, aurait en fait pu être un pain au levain, au goût quelque peu acidulé et à la réconfortante odeur de levure.

J’y retournerai et prendrai de meilleures photos.

Donq: excellente et accessible

Donq

En attendant, il y a deux autres boulangeries auxquelles je suis allé dans les derniers mois. L’une d’elles est la boulangerie Donq (voir la première photo). Elle était, avant Robuchon, la meilleure que j’ai mangée à Hong Kong. Le pain était croustillant (plus qu’à Little Mermaid) et se conservait relativement bien la journée suivante.

Comme Little Mermaid, Donq est une boulangerie d’origine japonaise et a deux succursales à Hong Kong. L’une est au sous-sol du grand magasin japonais Sogo à Causeway Bay, tandis que l’autre se trouve à North Point, près de la station de MTR Fortress Hill. Le pain est généralement bon (croustillant et moelleux), et on peut avoir du pain chaud à deux ou trois reprises dans une journée. Il arrive que les baguettes soit trop cuites et prenne une amertume marquée. Pour 17$HK (et plus longue et dense que chez Little Mermaid), c’est moins cher que tous les pains sophistiqués de Hong Kong! À chaque fois que je vais à Causeway Bay, je m’arrête toujours chez Donq pour m’acheter une baguette.

Simplylife: Pour faire changement

Simplylife

L’autre pain à essayer est chez Simplylife dans IFC Mall. Simplylife est un bistro style occidental et a également un comptoir à pain. La baguette est bonne, mais est plus chère que les autres mentionnées ci-haut, à 22$HK, en plus de n’être pas plus dense que celle de Donq et d’être souvent, sinon toujours, brûlée (à toutes les 4-5 fois que j’y suis allé). Peut-être qu’il y a une logique pour le pain trop cuit, pour une croûte qui reste dûre toute la journée (c’est ouvert jusqu’à ce que le resto ferme, vers minuit on présume), mais ça ne fait pas des baguettes trop appétissantes. Mais c’est aussi une des baguettes qu’on peut aller acheter facilement, car c’est direct dans le IFC Mall, en route vers les quais de Central.

Last week, I was walking on the path behind the famous dessert tofu place in Lamma (where you need to pass to get to the Power Plant Beach), and saw an eggplant field, alongside other vegetable. It turns out that the farmer sometimes go down to Yung Shue Wan’s main street with his load of fresh produce on a metal cart.

We celebrated the actual St-Jean-Baptiste as it should at the dim sum restaurant (Kam Fung on St-Urbain). Frankly, dim sum, “small bits” Chinese brunch, may not always be my favourite meal to have. But in Montreal, it doesn’t get better, as a way to assemble our group of friends around the same table.

In fact, one good thing about Chinese restaurants is the round tables, instead of rectangular ones that you’d find in Western restaurants. It’s really nice, because I wouldn’t have been able to speak to everyone sitting around the table otherwise.

***

On a célébré la St-Jean-Baptiste comme il se doit, c’est-à-dire au restaurant dim sum (Kam Fung sur St-Urbain). Mais pour être franc, le dim sum est loin d’être mon choix personnel de resto, mais y’a rien qui bât ça quand vient de trouver quelque chose pour rassembler tous mes amis autour d’une table.

Le resto chinois, peut-être comparé au resto occidental, a la qualité de placer les convives autour d’une table ronde, ce qui favorisera les interactions. Si on s’était mis autour de tables rectangulaires, je n’aurais certainement pas pu parler à tout le monde rassemblé ce midi-là. Alors, bravo au concept des tables rondes !

What if you are in a city that you never visited before, and it’s 11pm, in a remote area and you are hungry? We were hanging out near Xinghai Music Conservatory in the northern part of Central Guangzhou, and wandered slightly off to get a really late dinner.

We were previously at the Ping Pong, an arts and music bar right next to campus (opened by a Frenchman, and also serving trademark French/Chinese-style rhums), with occasional performances by some brand names of Chinese independent music. Using the advice from one of the school’s security guards posted nearby, we set off to a nearby street some five minutes away.

As we arrived to it, we picked the one of the two that had more people. Seeing and hearing the foreigners that we were, patrons of the nearby table started chatting us. They were nice and soon helped us order some American beer (while we wanted some local Zhujiang) as well as some food, more importantly.

Don’t (necessarily) let yourself be fooled by the looks. Indeed, the hygiene is questionable, and it’s not very clean-looking. They had live shrimp, but our friend Nick picked the dead and cooked ones b/c the former dwelled in too murky waters. Neither of us got sick on the next day, so we can assume that the stir-frying does its sanitizing job.

The shrimp was were in fact some of the best that I ever had, just because they were bite-sized, and have been perfectly fried such that the meat was still tender, and the shells crisp enough to be eaten whole. It was minus the head, most of the times, but I can believe that the fatty heads were perhaps the tastiest part of the poor animals.

Also had a garlic stir-fried veggies platter (choy sum) and “pork” fried with noodles. I wish I was hungrier so to be able to try more. But the shrimp were like the popcorn/chips with the beer (eventually a mix of Zhujiang and Bud in the same glasses that our newly-made friends and the place’s regulars poured for us).

The owner of the place is a quiet man surnamed Liu, who worked the kitchen with his wife.

In all, the three dishes (and lots of beer bottles) set us back about RMB60 for all three of us. Don’t be fooled by this post: there are tons of places like this one. The take-home message is that it’s always a good and safe bet to try a place that has a lot of locals eating at.

Disclaimer: I am not vegan, let alone vegetarian. But my friend Kim, who happens to be vegetarian, was in town a few weeks ago. Often I would take the tramway from Central to Causeway Bay, and notice this shiny, flashy new fast-food restaurant along it in Wan Chai on same block as the gas station. The restaurant is called Loving Hut and is in fact a chain originating from Taiwan, but with branches all across the world.

Kim told me that the Chinese-style fake meat she gets in Montreal is often imported from Taiwan. In the Buddhist tradition, followers would have these “vegetarian” days, which I know as “sek zai” (my grand-mother would do these once a week or so, and have tofu-based meals for an entire day).

Just like at a Maxim’s or Cafe de Coral, you must order from a menu next to the cashier. Then, you pick up your receipt and present it to the kitchen counter.

When I went for the first time, I had red rice with mini tofu cubes. Now, I probably ate or saw this dish before in its full-meat version. The vegan version was no less tasty (maybe a bit salty) and I would definitely have it again.

I also had a lemon basil seed (?) drink, which was served warm, and tasted sour with translucent seeds collecting at the bottom of the cup. There were char siu buns too without the char siu.

On a different occasion, now with three other friends, none vegetarians, we tried a larger variety of dishes. One was a classic yu hsiang eggplant, just without the ground pork. And then there was a bunch of noodles and a sweet and sour fried tofu.

===

A days after Loving Hut, we went again for vegetarian food, but this time in a real sit-down restaurant. It’s called Gaia Veggie Shop and is situated in Goldmark, right by the south side of the Sogo intersection in Causeway Bay, in the building next to the empty lot (old Mitsukoshi).

My photos are super low-res, so I am not going to post them. It’s good to know that the goal of this restaurant seems to be to fool you as well as possible. I never had fake sushi fish before, but let me tell you that it practically has the same texture, The menu in fact never specifies that such and such meat is “fake”, and dishes are always simply listed with meat names in it (only that you won’t find any meat in the actual order). Thinking about what we ate already makes me hungry… Aside from the sushi, we had a broth served in a coconut, and beef-wrapped enoki mushrooms. There was perhaps a sweet and sour chicken in there as well.

Pâtisserie-restaurant Callia (嘉莉／麵包茶餐聽)

Side of Pâtisserie Harmonie 麵包蜜語

Whereas the Chinese “food scene” (you can hardly call it a food scene when a city lacks quality Beijing and Shanghai cuisine) in 2009 has been dominated with the arrival of numerous restaurants and eateries opened by Mainland Chinese immigrants in Montreal’s new Chinatown, that of the traditional Chinatown on De la Gauchetière (between St-Urbain and Clark) was mostly revamped in the past two years with new Cantonese-owned shops, three of which happen to be bakeries.

Already in the winter of 2008, Harmonie (麵包蜜語) shook Montreal’s Chinese bakery standards by opening at the corner of St-Urbain and De la Gauchetière. Buns left to die on a colourless counter were a thing of the past. Now, Chinese pastries and other bite-size delicacies or cakes would be served in a decor on par with at least what you would see in Hong Kong or other larger Chinatowns of North America: lit-up counters, uniformed staff, floral decorations.

A year later in April 2009, a first competitor Restaurant Callia (嘉莉) was opened (by the family owning Chinese restaurant Keung Kee) across the street. It added the dining space and kitchen that Harmonie did not have, serving Hong Kong’s famed Cha chaan teng-style food of milk tea, beef brisket noodles and Italian noodles in Cantonese sauce, under big TV screens spouting soaps from TVB.

Now on my last visit of Chinatown during the Holidays, I noticed that my grandparents’ favourite (and personal longtime favourite, for lack of anything else) M.M. Légende took over the trendy “Asian-style” clothing store next door and hid behind wooden planks as it is undergoing renovations. For the past two years, I believe that it was to become the first casualty of the Callia/Harmonie combination. So instead, it renamed itself as Pâtisserie La Légende (麗晶餅屋) and decided to expand. Follow-ups would be greatly appreciated!

Maybe now this first casualty would be Dobe & Andy (right under of Kam Fung) if they don’t change. I’m now curious to see what is going to happen with this new huge space for a cha chaan teng, in spite of more restaurant space made available with the imminent inauguration of Plaza Swatow (長盛廣場).

Saturation, or serious signs of Chinese Montrealers moving back to Chinatown? My opinion is that this will largely depend on affordable parking space made available in the area from the Swatow building. Right now, paid parking is prohibitively expensive (no incentive as in downtown Montreal) and free spots can only be found four or five blocks away. A pleasure for nearby residents and public transit users, but a chore for a certain class of car-going suburbanites that I grew up with…

For some reason that evades me, good local Northern Chinese food is a rarity in Hong Kong, where wonton noodles, curried meat soup and Chinese rotisserie dominate the local fast-food landscape. You won’t find roujiamo in a street food stall, while fried tofus, squid, eggplant, or egg tarts, and other pineapple buns are everywhere. (You might also easily find upscale-ish Shanghai or Beijing restaurants in Hong Kong.)

So I made sure that as a must-have meal in Montreal, as I’m spending the Holidays here, among smoked meat and bagels (although no time for poutine), I would eat dumplings, Northern-style. One of Montreal’s prime locations for dumplings is Qing Hua Yuan. They were on St-Marc when they opened last year, but reopened this Fall on Lincoln, close to St-Mathieu in our Chinatown Two, near Concordia University.

The boiled dumplings are nothing special, but now the steamed ones! In contrast to their boiled counterparts, they perfectly conserve their full taste, and if you are a connoisseur of food, you would be careful to pierce your dumpling, savour the broth inside, before engulfing the rest of the jiaozi. The flavours seem to have expanded by a bit (any combo of pork, lamb, chicken, eggs, vegetable, anise, coriander, Chinese cabbage, etc.), on top of the surprising fried dumplings. Extra goodness: the taste of the reed coming from the steamer.

The fried ones (see second picture of this post) are served with a fine film, which I am guessing comes from a dried-up flour mixture, which in itself puts up a nice show.

Unfortunately, they only staffed one person to take care of the whole floor at lunchtime (it was the Holidays though), and cooled-off dumplings and unusually slow service (one hour from sitting to getting meal at lunchtime) were the resulting minus points. On the other hand, they thought of giving shrimp chips as a free-of-charge snack now, like they would give bread in a European restaurant, because steamed dumplings usually take 25 to prepare.

But is not cheap. On my second time there, with my parents at dinnertime, we needed four portions to be full (depending of flavour, steamer/plate is $8-13, + taxes/service). But hey, you’re paying for hand-made top-quality dumplings.

Qing Hua Dumpling, (438) 288-5366, 1676 Ave Lincoln, Montreal, QC H3H

Not too far of a walk from Wan Chai MTR station on Hong Kong island, you will find the Islamic Centre Canteen on the 5th floor of a muslim religious centre. People come to the Masjid Ammar and Osman Ramju Sadick Islamic Centre to pray, but also to enjoy good halal Chinese food. How can you have dim sum without pork, one might ask.

We ordered a generous variety of dim sum classics such as har gow, siu mai (w/o pork, eh), cheong faan and lo mai gai, and were able to get out of there for HKD30 (CAD4) each. Normal: the “big” (most expensive) dim sum were priced at only HKD12. I must say that it wasn’t the best dim sum I ever had in Hong Kong, but it was decent enough. It is featured in the Hong Kong tourist guide for people of muslim faith, and we noticed a number of people from Southeast Asia.

Islamic Centre Canteen. 5/F, 40 Oi Kwan Road. Wan Chai, Hong Kong, 2834 8211. Business Hours: 9:00a.m.10:00p.m.

Eating local in Hong Kong is a rather hard thing to do. The most local food usually gets are fruits and vegetable from over the border in China’s Guangdong province.

However, if you are living in the “countryside”, like on Lamma Island, chances are that you might be finding a small farm next to where you are living. This is what I discovered when my friend who has been living on Lamma for some time took me to this small chunk of land, in the small valley at the entrance of Tai Peng village, cultivated by an man maybe in his 60s. With his peasant hat, tool in hand, he seems to be straight out of some old movie, growing his vegetables on this island that is better known for its seafood, great outdoors and hippie culture.

(Next to their field, they are going to be developing new houses… so who knows if the farm’s going to last.)

For one HKD (13 Canadian cents), you can get about three branches of choy sum (菜心), with gigantic leaves. For the same price, you can also get more than enough of green onions (蔥), for what would cost 2-3 times more in Lamma’s grocery stores, and 4-5 times more in my hometown in Canada.

The next day, I came back for some yeen choy (莧菜), a kind of Chinese spinach with red pigmentation on its leaves also called Amaranth, a lad tougher than the regular kind of spinach. A portion for that evening’s dinner cost me two HKD (about 25 Canadian cents). They were delicious, fried with garlic and salt.

The lettuce, the man said, were going to be plump enough at the end of November…

A view of the field as dinnertime approaches…

…and my sink at dinnertime

Edit (2010-01-02):

First off, I’ve no idea of the exact address. My host for the past week, who took me to Lung Kee Wonton (龍記招牌雲吞), said that it was a well-kept secret (according to him, has the best wonton in the whole city) that only Japanese publications have covered so far outside of Hong Kong.

Why are its wontons so special? Because they are all-shrimp. That’s right: just the skins tightly wrapping bits of shrimp. My friend was himself taken there by a Muslim person. Wontons are usually pork and shrimp in the Cantonese tradition (those pork-only multiple-skin layers wontons at Chinese buffets are nothing but pale imitations).

Lung Kee’s wontons are almost like boiled har gow, so much the shrimp flavour was dominant.

Your wontons are served as wonton mein 雲吞麵, so wontons with noodles of your choice, which are the classic egg-based thin noodles , in a clear broth.

Better yet, you may also choose thick noodles, also egg-based. Aside from this, there is also the lou min 撈麵 or dry mix version, which is the wontons on noodles and veggies, without the broth and with oyster sauce on top. It’s slightly more expensive but it’s also for a slightly larger portion. So for the second serving, I had a combination of these two options.

Lung Kee is located somewhere on Carnarvon Road, across from The Masterpiece in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon side. You may find another restaurant of the same name in Jordan, but that’s not the same one (pictures of its wontons also don’t match)… So, good luck finding it!

In the meanwhile, here is the menu.

Every time I come to Hong Kong, I notice some new “alternate” flavour of a familiar product. One time, it was McDonald’s ice cream sundae served with red bean or mango sauce (in place of strawberry or chocolate, which are also available). This time, I was eating at a Japanese chain restaurant called Yoshinoya (吉野家) and one of the dessert options for HKD$3 was… tofu ice cream, distributed by Nestlé!

It looks a lot like a vanilla ice cream. Now, what does it taste like? I would say that it was as if cow milk/cream was replaced with soy milk. So, maybe it tastes like tofu. In a land where tofu is considered as much a dessert (as doufu fa or 豆腐花), the flavour name does not sound weird at all. The other available flavour? Black sesame! (zi ma woo or 芝麻糊, the base of a well-known Cantonese dessert)

However, the one time I checked in a grocery store for these flavours, I did not find any of them under the Nestlé brand…

On the same night that we visited 365 Hennessy Rd, we followed our hosts to the other side of the city to Yau Ma Tei in Kowloon.

What was the occasion? The occasion was pot rice, also called po chai fan 煲仔飯 in Cantonese. Po chai fan is rice in a clay pot served with various types of meat, vegetable, seafood or condiments on top of it. In cities like Montreal, pot rice can sometimes be ordered in a Cantonese restaurant, but usually requires too much work to be considered a typical dish that people order. In Hong Kong, pot rice can be the restaurant’s specialty, as it is the case for 四季煲仔飯 Four Seasons Pot Rice.

You can think of pot rice as a style of Chinese bibim bap, with a different range of ingredients. The pot is sizzling hot and the rice and meat are still cooking when it is brought to your table. You should then add in some soy sauce and let it cook for a few minutes. While you are waiting, it is a good idea to order some side dishes, such as fried veggies or an oyster omelette:

Fried tung choi with foo yu sauce

Oysters omelette

The two girls who brought us here told us that the location used to be a family mom-and-pop hamburger restaurant. The current tenant has done nothing about the decoration: it’s simply a large hall covered in white tiles, with fluorescent lighting and huge fans blowing.

Just like La Banquise has twenty or more types of poutine, you can choose from an endless number of “toppings” for your rice at Four Seasons Pot Rice. My friends had a variety of chicken, chicken feet and other meat, while I went for a classic chicken with Chinese mushrooms.

The price for the single pot is also ridiculously low at $HKD22 for “regular flavours” (see menu), like combinations of two of Chinese sausage, salty fish, sliced pork, liver sausage and chicken.

46-58 Arthur Street, Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon (map)

I am not generally a fan of dim sum or yum cha, the terms usually used interchangeably to describe a Chinese brunch popularized by the Cantonese (and exported to the West by them). Dim sum literally means “bite heart” or “touch the heart” says Wikipedia, while Yum cha literally means “drink tea” and describe the activity of relaxing around a cup of tea (and eating dim sum, sometimes).

I’ve typically only eaten in large dim sum halls, here in Hong Kong as well as back home in Montreal. In Hong Kong, family would bring me to restaurants with overly nice decors. However, my tastes tend to range around the “beau, bon, pas cher”, a French expression from home that basically means “nice, good, inexpensive”.

叁去壹(點心粉麵飯) = Sam Hui Yat = Three Goes One

Steamers

From the tram stop in Sai Ying Pun (西營盤), we walked only a few minutes to get to 叁去壹 (Sam Hui Yat – something like Three Goes One). Located at the very beginning of Pokfulam Road (corner with First St), which eventually leads to the University of Hong Kong, some 200m up the hill, the restaurant is in fact an unassuming eatery, with no more than a dozen tables for about 30 clients at once. It was a far cry from what I imagined, perhaps because I’ve always been used to being served dim sum in large restaurants (here in Hong Kong, restaurants with carts also virtually don’t exist anymore).

I originally horribly missed my first occasion to eat here with Chinese speakers and on the time that I actually went, I was only with my non-Chinese-speaking friend. Why is that so important? Because there is not a single English character in the entire restaurant! Unable to get a good hold of the menu, I resorted to asking the waiter, who was very patient and cordial in helping me out. After listening to the chef’s suggestions, I decided to go for sure bets, namely siumai (燒賣 – seasoned ground pork in wrapper), har gow (蝦餃 – shrimp dumpling) and steamed black-bean spare ribs (豉汁排骨). It’s also a surcharge of $HKD3 for tea per person.

For the record, the siumai was juicy inside and the har gow’s shrimp crunched right under one’s teeth and the ribs were very tender. Don’t feel intimidated by the “minimalistic” setting, because the food is in fact excellent.

At the front of the restaurant was the “steamers station”, where the chef (the guy in a red sleeveless shirt) presumably steamed orders of dumplings and other dim sum. The order came very quickly, as you’d expect for a diner. To pay, don’t necessarily expect the waiter to give you the bill: just hand him the money as if you knew the total price and he will count the number of steamers (they are invariably $HKD9) or lotus leaves that you have spread out in front of you. It’s also a surcharge of $HKD3 for tea per person.

Menu (click for translation notes on Flickr)

Of course, the menu is all in Chinese, and there is another menu in the restaurant that is for non-dim sum dishes, such as fried rice and noodles. Aside from those aforementioned, Sam Hui Yat has a complete lineup of dim sum classics: fong zao (鳳爪 – chicken feet), chiu chow fun go (潮州粉果 – Chaozhou-style dumplings), char siu pao (叉燒包 – pork bun), lo mai gai (糯米雞 – lotus leaf chicken rice) and a variety of cheong fun (腸粉 – rice rolls).

Har Gow (蝦餃)

Shaomai (燒賣)

It is to be noted that the restaurant closes at 2:30PM in the afternoon. To get there, the easiest way is to take the tram going west from Central or Sheung Wan MTR (take the trams going to Whitty Street Depot or Kennedy Town). Then, walk up the slope on Western St., until you get to Pokfulam Road.

11 Pokfulam Road, Sai Ying Pun, Sheung Wan (map)