The D-Day: Dim Sum

Since I knew I was coming to Hong Kong, I couldn't think of anything else but dim sum. On Sunday morning I met an old friend of mine who is living now there with his Hongkongese wife, and we went to yum cha.

We went to a popular dim sum tea house, as dim sum should only be served with tea. The place was very busy, crowded and noisy, but it was really fun! Dim sum dishes were pushed around on steam carts by servers who went around the restaurant offering them to customers. The selection of the tea is, by all means, the most important thing when eating dim sum. Actually, and according to the history of dim sum, the small snacks were first introduced later to the tea houses.

Here a selection of the dishes we tasted (I hope my memory doesn't fail me): sautéed pork rips, turnip cake, chicket feet, tofu skin rolls filled with taro and duck feet, dumplings, cabbage rolls, duck feet, steamed rolls filled with sausage, sponge cake and steamed rice noodle rolls filled with pork meat.

Traditional restaurants don't have a menu so, when you take a dish, the woman pushing the cart will stamp your bill card on the table, depending on dish and size of it. Then you pay when you leave the restaurant.

It was really fun and absolutely delicious!

Postcard home

Dear family and friends,

I write this postcard from the last destination of my trip. I left Australia last Thursday and, as you already know through last post, I've made a short stopover in Hong Kong, basically to eat, I must confess. This is my first time in this side of the Asian continent and since I got off the plane I've been just lost in a state of fascination.

I think Hong Kong is an easy city for the Asia beginner like me: signs, directions, street names, most of the restaurant menus and so on, are written in English, besides Cantonese. The public transport is one of the most efficient I've ever experienced and very user-friendly too. Everything is well organized and, so my personal experience, Hong Kong people are polite and patient with the stranger, and most of them speak English.

And the street markets... well, the street markets deserve a different chapter for themselves...

I still have a couple of great meals in Hong Kong I want to show you. Until then, you can see more pictures in the Hong Kong Album.

The Breakfast

Today I went out for breakfast. When I arrived at the place that someone had recommended me, I took the stairs to the semi-basement of the building without knowing very well what expected me down there. I pushed the glass door with red undecipherable letters on it and walked in crossing the wide entrance until I stood in front of the woman at the cash desk. She was seating on an old high desk, one of those you usually find in antique diners or restaurants. With a short hand gesture, she told me to go ahead and seat wherever I wanted. At the table I studied the menu for a couple of minutes, though it wasn’t difficult to choose one of the ten different options. Imitating what other customers did, I raised my hand like in good old school times and waited until the waiter saw me. When he approached my table, I pointed my choice at the menu.

While I was waiting for my breakfast, I observed the other customers: a mixture of employees from the adjoining skyscrapers, a couple of retired people and two small groups of students. That was at least my guess. Apart from the students, who were too busy playing with their smart phones, most of the customers seemed to be absorbed in their papers or snoozing lost in their dreams. It was pretty early. Delivery men came and went through the kitchen door carrying tottering staples of boxes. The waiters moved smoothly through the tables, leaving dishes and drinks on them without stopping. There was a known sound of dishes and cutlery and, in the background, the humming of the air conditioning and a television nobody was paying attention to.

For a short moment, a couple of eyes took a furtive look at the only person in the place who didn’t look Asian, as she was about to take a picture of the food in front of her. My breakfast had arrived. At that moment, a thought crossed my mind: this could be the same bustle you’d find in a Spanish restaurant during the busy breakfast time. But I was not in Spain, I was in Hong Kong.