Dining in Hong Kong : Freshness Comes First at an Asian Crossroads

“Hong Kong is the finest place to dine in the world,” said Peter Gautschi, the now-retired head of the Peninsula Group, as we sat at tea in the lobby of Hong Kong’s Peninsula Hotel.

“I can order any ingredient from anywhere,” he continued. “Fresh chickens from France, fish from England, anything, and it will be on the next plane--there are no duty or agricultural restrictions here. Plus, the Chinese have the freshest ingredients on earth.”

To the Chinese, fresh means live. An early morning visit to the Central Market in the heart of Hong Kong shows a world far from the antiseptic environment of Western supermarkets.

Live ducks, geese and chickens cackle noisily from hundreds of bamboo cages. Frogs, fish and turtles are kept in large tanks of water, and vegetables glisten with morning dew.

The freshness and availability of ingredients, perhaps more than anything, make eating in Hong Kong different from dining in any other city.

Chefs Flee Mainland

“During China’s Cultural Revolution, many of the country’s greatest chefs fled the mainland for the security of the Crown colony,” Gautschi told us as we sipped tea and nibbled on freshly baked scones with Devonshire clotted cream--flown in from England.

Later, at Sun Tung Lok Seafood restaurant in Kowloon’s Harbor City we met Willie Mark, food critic and international expert on Chinese cuisine, who ordered a series of courses that proved the point.

“We Chinese eat with chopsticks so we can get things out of a boiling pot,” he joked, as our waitress deftly served the first course of “dancing shrimp.” That’s live shrimp that are doused with Chinese rice wine, then cooked for only two or three minutes in flaming brandy.

Next came individual dumplings that, when broken open, had shark’s fin soup inside. “Shark’s fin is a great delicacy here; a single dish can cost $150 (U.S.),” Mark explained. “Many Chinese dishes are appreciated for their texture as well as their taste, and shark’s fin is eaten for its soft, smooth texture.”

Other dishes in the banquet included a steamed Hong Kong sole, abalone with prawns and crab roe, cold slices of chicken, ham, frog and pork marinated in aromatic spices, mixed vegetables with bean curd, noodles with deep-fried bean sprouts. For dessert it was wheat flour cakes, cookies and lotus seeds.

Diversity of Dishes

“The refinement of the foods in China is a result of the fact that food was always scarce,” Mark said when we asked about the diversity of dishes. “The Chinese people found a way to use almost every part of the plant or animal they cook, and found a way to make it taste delicious.”

Although the majority of restaurants in Hong Kong are Cantonese, restaurants also feature Szechuan, Peking, Fujian, Shanghai, Hunan and other regional dishes.

In Kowloon a popular Peking-style restaurant is Spring Deer, but the nearby North China restaurant is just as good, cheaper and less crowded.

We began with smoked duck, fragrant with tea leaves, and went on to delicate mixed vegetables, whole fried prawns, deep-fried crab cakes that were light on the inside and crispy on the outside, and hot, spicy beef with green peppers. The flavors were clean and precise, a mark of good cooking.

On Hong Kong Island the Cleveland Szechuan restaurant is one block away from Food Street, so named for its assortment of Chinese, Japanese and Western-style restaurants.

At the Cleveland the hot, spicy, slightly oily food of Szechuan is served in an upstairs dining room. Waiters carry sizzling platters of beef and shrimp, a sort of Chinese fajitas , a specialty of the restaurant.

Seats More Than a Thousand

A special treat when in Hong Kong is to breakfast on dim sum, little pastries and meats served from passing carts in large restaurants. Congee, a rice porridge usually garnished with chicken, pork or fish is also offered.

One of the most popular dim sum restaurants is Maxim’s Palace Chinese restaurant adjoining the Excelsior Hotel in Causeway Bay. Also recommended is the United. Both are huge, seating more than a thousand, and very busy at lunchtime.

The small Luk Yu Teahouse is good for dim sum served in an old Hong Kong atmosphere of polished wooden booths and beveled mirrors.

Some of the best dining here is found in small restaurants out in the New Territories. Some serve only one specialty. Worth a trip if you are adventurous is the Yee Kee restaurant in Sham Tseng. It has a menu, but everyone orders the duck. Seating is at folding tables--on busy days they spill onto the parking lot. It is informal, and the Peking duck is famous. They serve upward of 600 ducks a day.

Another adventure is to take a ferry ride from Aberdeen Harbor to Lamma Island and eat at the Lamma Hilton. No relation to the hotel chain, it is the best seafood restaurant in Sok Kwu Wan, the small settlement at the ferry landing.

Lamma Island is rural, and trails lead through quaint old villages and into the countryside. A word of caution--be sure to take your passport. The police have been known to ask for identification on the way back.

Closer to Hong Kong, the tiny island of Lei Yue Mun offers an urban alternative to Lamma. A small ferry takes you across a 100-yard inlet to the island, where fish tanks line the narrow paths. You bargain for the fish and then take your purchases into one of the many restaurants where dinner is prepared.

Taxis at All Hours

The last restaurant on the right, Hoi-Tin, is considered the best. Taxis are usually available at all hours at the ferry pier to take you back to your hotel.

The little sampans in the typhoon shelter in front of Causeway Bay offer yet another experience. Take along your favorite drinks and walk in and out among the boats to bargain for fresh shrimp, prawns or crab. They cook right on the boat.

At the other end of the culinary spectrum, Hong Kong has some of the most elaborate Chinese restaurants you are likely to find anywhere. Lai Ching Heen in the Regent Hotel serves seasonal Chinese food in a room overlooking Hong Kong Harbor. The place settings are of jade and the chopsticks are ivory and silver.

Perhaps the finest Chinese restaurant in the city, and one of the finest in the world, is Man Wah atop the Mandarin Hotel. With about 900 dishes available, the restaurant serves food of unparalleled sophistication.

At a setting overlooking the lights of the harbor we dined on fresh lobster salad, deep-fried minced pigeon rolls in sweet and sour sauce, fresh crab claws sauteed with broccoli, double-boiled shark’s fin soup with chicken, crispy boneless chicken with Yunnan ham and sweetened walnuts, mixed vegetables in a taro basket, baked fried rice in a coconut cup. For dessert we had a sweet soup of papaya and snow fungus.

Those who just have to have Western food can take heart. Hong Kong has several McDonald’s and dozens of pizza take-outs. And with Swiss and Germans running many of the hotels, the city has some fine continental cuisine.

Daily Pub Lunch

The Grill in the Mandarin Hotel serves Kobe, Scottish or Kansas City beef. Also in the Mandarin, Pierrot, serving classic French cuisine, offers such dishes as sauteed fillet of turbot with fresh herb sabayon, pan-fried lotte in red wine and fresh truffle sauce, and scallops with fresh ginger and champagne sauce.

The Dickens Bar in the Excelsior Hotel in Causeway Bay serves a daily pub lunch featuring a variety of Indian curries. The Excelsior’s Grill is the ideal place to watch the firing of the noon gun immortalized by Noel Coward.

Gaddi’s, the Peninsula Hotel’s fine restaurant, is a glittering showcase for extravagant dining, with Georgian silver and rare Chinese antiques. A priceless 17th-Century coromandel screen is the showpiece of the dining room. Among the specialties are guinea fowl in champagne sauce reduced with fine Armagnac, and cassoulet of oysters with asparagus.

An average dinner in Hong Kong should run about $10 to $15 (U.S.) per person. Figure about $5 to $7 per person for dim sum. For the major formal restaurants a dinner will cost between $30 and $50 per person.

For most restaurants, have your hotel make reservations. Hotel concierges also are excellent sources for good restaurants.

The Mandarin Hotel, 5 Connaught Road, Hong Kong (Central), phone 5-220111. The Regent Hotel, Salisbury Road, Kowloon, phone 3-7211211. The Excelsior Hotel, Causeway Bay, phone 5-767365. The Peninsula Hotel, Salisbury Road, Kowloon, phone 3-666251. Pine & Bamboo, 103 Sai Yung Choi, Kowloon, phone 3-947195.

New American restaurant, 177-9 Wanchai Road, Wanchai, phone 5-750458. Szechuan Lau, 466 Lockhart Road, Causeway Bay, phone 5-8919027. Red Pepper, 7 Lan Fong Road, Causeway Bay, phone 5-768046. Orchid Garden, Kin 37 Hankow Road, Kowloon, phone 3-672126. Sun Tung Lok, Harbor City, Kowloon, phone 3-7220288.

United restaurant, 365 Queen’s Road West, phone 5-463898. Maxim’s Palace Chinese restaurant, World Trade Center, 1/F, Hong Kong, phone 5-760288. Spring Deer restaurant, 42 Mody Road, Tsimshatsui, Kowloon, phone 3-664012. North China restaurant, 7 Hart Ave., Tsimshatsui, Kowloon, phone 3-668239. Cleveland Szechuan restaurant, Cleveland Street, Causeway Bay, phone 5-763876.

Luk Yu Tea House, 26 Stanley St., Hong Kong, phone 5-235464. Yee Kee restaurant, 49 Tsun Yip St., phone 3-897997. Peach Garden Seafood restaurant, 11 Sok Kwu Wan, Lamma Island, phone 5-9828581. Lamma Hilton, Sok Kwu Wan, Lamma Island. Hoi-Tin, Lei Yue Mun, phone 3-481482.