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How To Eat Like You’re From Hong Kong

We’ve all had Hong Kong food at some point. For most, it starts and ends from 11am at Yum Cha. For the slightly more adventurous, it continues onto satay beef noodles and a milk tea at a cha chaan teng. While we’ve all enjoyed it, we at Yellowbelly are here to help you take it…

Andrew Yee

We’ve all had Hong Kong food at some point. For most, it starts and ends from 11am at Yum Cha. For the slightly more adventurous, it continues onto satay beef noodles and a milk tea at a cha chaan teng. While we’ve all enjoyed it, we at Yellowbelly are here to help you take it to the next level. We want to introduce you to a world of glistening yellow pastries and slabs of roast pork that drip like the city’s maze of air conditioners — of course, enjoyed with a rolled-up singlet showing off a little stomach. For our inaugural how-to guide, we want to forge your foodie passport. With the help of our carefully assembled braintrust, we want to show you “How To Eat Like You’re From Hong Kong”.

1. When, Where, and What

Your enjoyment level of Hong Kong cuisine can hang on time and place like a duck draped in a barbecue window. For example, Yum Cha should only be eaten in the brunching hours (early afternoon gets the pass), and oyster omelettes hit hardest, accompanied by the Je ne sais quoi of the street. To help us figure out what’s best and when, we asked local restaurateur and big-pants enthusiast Eugene Leung. 

Mornings 

I see Yum Cha as a weekend occasion where friends and family get together for a long brunch. I often go to the Eight in Market City or Dim Joy House in Chatswood RSL. 

Lunch and afternoons

Wonton noodle places are great because you can go any time of day, whether it’s a light lunch or a mid-afternoon savoury snack. Sun Kee in Chatswood’s Mandarin Centre does a great job with their springy noodles and authentic tasting soup. Cha chaan tengs are kind of like Australian cafes. They’re casual, serving breakfast and lunch. They offer a mix of Asian and Western options, with at least 75 items on the menu.

Dinner

Dinner is usually had at a Chinese restaurant. Tanks of live seafood are a solid indicator that you’ll have a good time while spending big. I like going to Sun Ming in Hurstville. They’re more of a hybrid between a cha chaan teng and a restaurant, doing both lunch and dinner well in equal measure.

2. Embrace The Casual

Hong Kong dining etiquette isn’t for the faint of heart. All the small talk and pleasantries are checked at the door and traded in for the clattering of porcelain, the shout of a waiter, and the slap of a bill on the table. There’s a casual, straightforward nature to Hong Kong dining that needs to be embraced to get the most out of your meal. We thought, who better to navigate it all than drummer and first-time Donnie Darko watcher, Manson Luk?

When I order a coffee in Sydney, the same dialogue paths pop up: “How are you? How’s work? You doing much this week?” and  I reply with the usual “Yeah, good, nah, not much”. Over the years of slowly developing my caffeine dependency, I’ve come to find both peace and irritation in Sydney’s disingenuous small talk. If no one means what they say, why should you?  

In Hong Kong, these vain courtesies don’t exist. On a recent trip, I went to a cafe in Sheung Wan, a busy city district. I ordered my usual strong flat white and said the same “How are you going? What’s been happening?” routine that’s been baked into my life. I ended up talking to the barista for 45 minutes. We became fast friends and hung out after his shift. He told me that no one really asks these types of questions at cafes in Hong Kong. You walk in, you declare your order loud enough so that the person doomscrolling in the toilet can hear you, get your drink, then leave. To most, this might seem rude. But people gotta go, man. In the infamous city where “996” (9am-9pm, 6 days a week) is normalised, there is no time to talk about the latest waterside run club that opens into a matcha DJ event with an indifferent stranger, who’s probably waiting on their hinge match to reply. In Sydney, when people don’t care, they fake it.

On the contrary, taking more than 3 seconds to order at a Hong Kong-style diner guarantees a four-foot-eleven Asian aunty will be roasting you. I’ve had friends experience this firsthand, and they’ll leave away singed (pun intended), snarkily remarking on the hostility of Hong Kongers, without realising that maybe the best way to go would be to roast them back. They say when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Being in Hong Kong has made me wonder whether the asinine small talk we partake in is something that’s bred into us. To embrace the casual means letting go of what we’re raised to do. It means spending real time somewhere foreign to us and understanding it on its own terms. Maybe one day, when we say “let’s hang out sometime”, we’ll really mean it. 

3. The Perfect Meal

Now that you’ve got the basics down, all that’s left to do is eat. But the question remains, “What should I order?” Don’t fret, we’re here to free you from the paralysis of choice. We asked a few of our closest friends and trusted Hong Kong diners for their perfect meals in the hope that they’ll become yours too. 

Gene & Dan: The Chaos of Choice

Gene & Dan are two of the minds behind INJURY, a Sydney-based interdisciplinary brand specialising in fashion, music, CG films, digital fashion, and art collectables. Between appearing at fashion weeks, film festivals, and art galleries, the two spend their time hunting down the perfect bowl of cart noodles. 

The magic of Hong Kong cuisine is that you can almost always rely on an incredibly extensive menu with endless varieties to choose from, turning a simple lunch into a sprawling culinary map. You can come alone or with a friend, but once you sit down and really look at the menu, you’ll wish you brought at least 6 more people because there are so many dishes to choose from, and you’ll kinda want to try them all. 

In Sydney, we head to Hong Kong Bing Sutt because the vibe teleports us straight back to Kowloon; the classic menu order sheets and the non-stop Canto-pop playlist set the stage for a meal that pivots from a casual snack to a full dinner spread. The must-orders include: smoky wok hei stir-fried beef rice noodles, the rich comfort of baked pork chop or seafood rice, and the rare find of authentic cart noodles (we reckon this is the only legit place we can get them). We always include the big dishes like the black bean clam stir-fry, steaming clay-pot rice for those prized crispy bits, and silky cheung fun rice-noodle rolls. We even start with a Hong Kong-style minestrone soup and the fake shark fin soup for that silky street food soul. To wash it all down, we highly recommend the classic drinks you can only find in a cha chaan tang, like a gritty sweet yuenyeung, a nostalgic cream soda with milk, or the iconic shaved ice with red bean and ice cream, a classic drink.

Notable Mentions: For the ultimate cheap eats, you have to go for the classic French toast or the simple toast with jam and peanut butter. While many people overlook the toast, it is actually a key item for any cha chaan tang. The toast has to be at the perfect temperature so the butter merges with the bread, and those crispy buns with condensed milk provide that essential hit of childhood nostalgia. We also love the scallion oil instant noodles with eggs, our ultimate salty-oily guilty pleasure that turns a quick bite into a proper feast.

Hot Tip: While you are visiting Hong Kong Bing Sutt in Burwood, you have to stop by Maria’s Bakery just a few doors down. It is easily one of the most authentic Hong Kong bakeries in Sydney. You must try their Coffee Pineapple Bun (Gaa Fei Bo Lo Bau) and their Wife Cake (Lo Po Beng). The pastry is exactly as it should be, flaky and traditional.

Johanna Ng: Uh Oh Spaghetti-oh

Johanna Ng is an artist who works in photography, moving image, installation, and performance. Her taste in food is just as eclectic as her views on the image. Ng is just as likely to bring up Susan Sontag’s ‘On Photography’ as she is her fervent love for spaghetti bolognaise.

I have a deep reverence for Hong Kong’s innovative reimagination of Britain’s colonisation of the subtropical archipelago. One famous brainchild is the headache-inducing concoction that is the Hong Kong milk tea. It is black tea brewed long, strong and bitter, tameable only by thick, shelf-stable evaporated milk and a fat dump of sugar. 

My favourite transformation of Britain’s western influence is Hong Kong pasta. My perfect Hong Kong meal is spaghetti bolognaise, or ‘spaghetti with meat sauce’ as my family calls it. Minced beef is suspended in a red sauce thickened with ketchup and corn starch, making for a silky goo. If you’re lucky, you may be blessed by the appearance of a cut-up hot dog. If you’re willing to pay a few extra dollars and wait twenty minutes after everyone else has received their order, you can have it au gratin style, baked in a white oval dish with a browned skin of bubbling cheese. If you grew up with my father making it, canned champignon mushrooms and kidney beans are included for an incongruent increase in macros. 

However, its staple feature makes it a perfect dish for me and one that brings many to their knees in a nihilist fugue state when they find out I like it. The noodles must be overcooked as if they had been sitting for an hour in a pot of warm water, waiting for a speedy plate-up should the rare occasion arise that a dumb bitch order it. Pair these soft mushy strands with the aforementioned creamy black tea and this meal will get your heart racing. Not in a totally metaphoric way. Unfortunately, the words of condemned sexual deviant and all-round POS, Trey Songz, come to mind: I never knew love would feel like a heart attack. 

Evie: A Whole Day of Eating (Part 1) 

Evie is a Hong Kong-born artist, illustrator, and graphic designer. Her works have been exhibited, pasted, and painted on walls throughout the city. Evie’s mastery with a pen and brush is only matched by her proficiency with a pair of chopsticks at a dai pai dong.  

The perfect Hong Kong meal isn’t just one meal – it’s a whole day of eating. It’s eating when you’re hungry and when you’re not, alone in the morning, and then sharing everything at a crowded table at night.

Let’s start with breakfast. It’s a late-riser city, and breakfast is usually skipped or something grabbed at home. But if I am up early, rushing out for a meeting, and I’ve got a bit of time before it all starts, my ideal Hong Kong breakfast is at a cha chaan teng. I’d order a breakfast set with hot milk tea, a silky scrambled egg sandwich, the bread barely toasted, and a macaroni soup with slices of ham floating on top, comfortingly bland in a way that feels like childhood.

Lunch is cart noodles. You’re handed a sheet and pen to choose thin or thick noodles, soup base, and toppings to build your own bowl. My go-to would be beef brisket soup with radish, pig blood curd, mushrooms soaking up the broth, and curry fishballs, adding that slightly spicy kick. The bowl usually comes overloaded, soup spilling everywhere as you pick through the noodles.
Recommendation: Wing Kee Cart Noodles, Hong Kong

Not quite hungry in the late afternoon, but it’s something you always end up doing. Hong Kong-style French toast and iced milk tea back at the cha chaan teng. The toast is thick and deep-fried until golden, with peanut butter inside, a slab of butter on top, and drenched in syrup. It sounds intense, but it’s completely right.
Recommendation: Wah Lok Cafe, Hong Kong

Dinner settles at a dai pai dong with round tables and fluorescent lighting. Dishes meant to be shared, and you’d always over-order to make sure everyone is full by the end of the night. Our favourite dishes are braised eggplant pot and Cantonese crispy salt-and-pepper pork, and when the server comes around to take rice orders, you’d raise your hand if you want a bowl. Big bottles of Blue Girl beer are passed around the table. It’s chaotic and loud at the dai pai dong – everyone reaching in with chopsticks, talking over each other, but I love a big dinner with friends at a dai pai dong.
Recommendation: Tin Cheung Restaurant, Hong Kong

Piet Guilfoyle: A Whole Day of Eating (Part 2)

Piet is a skater and biker who cut his teeth on Hong Kong’s bustling streets. Though he looks every bit the epitome of daringness behind the handlebars of a Harley Davidson, even he knows the risk involved with biting into a freshly baked au gratin rice.

Life in HK doesn’t start till around 10-11am – so we’re talking brunch, it’s gotta be something delicious that you can find everywhere and not break the bank. First stop: McCafe. Seriously, if you want acceptable coffee at a reasonable price, available anywhere, go to a McCafe. My preference is an iced long black. If you’re in a district with an independent coffee shop, go there; the coffee will be first-class. The second stop, within close proximity to any McDonald’s, will be an old-school bakery that sells egg tarts and a range of baked goods. Pair your tarts with anything on the menu that looks intriguing. 

After a few hours of walking around, you’re going to start feeling pretty hungry. Find a BBQ spot. Look into wet markets nearby for options that are price-friendly and exceptionally delicious. My go-to is the typical pork-on-pork: char siu, siu yuk faan (sweet BBQ pork and crispy pork belly rice). Make sure to ask for a generous dollop of gerng yung (ginger green onion sauce/oil). This will smash your hunger and carry you through to dinner.

For dinner, find the nearest chan chaan teng and order any guk faan (baked rice dish) that tickles your fancy. You’ll spend the next 20 to 30 minutes wondering when it will arrive. While you wait, order an iced milk tea (less sugar). Finish this in 3 mins, then order another. When the baked rice arrives, it will be served at around 200 degrees Celsius. Wait another 10 minutes for it to cool before digging in, or risk burning your mouth.

Wrap up the day with dessert by finding your local sweet tofu dealer. What you’re looking for is a no-frills front shop serving tofu out of a container akin to an esky, with people running the establishment who are well into their 50s. Try the tofu fa (tofu and sweet ginger soup) and get some tong yuen (sweet rice balls with sesame paste inside) to go with it. My favourite dessert is the black sesame soup with tofu. While not all places offer this delicious combo, if you ask nicely, they might make it for you.

Eating in Hong Kong isn’t about going to Michelin-starred places some pretentious foodie recommends; it’s about exploration and experimentation. There is so much to see and eat in HK. Just let it flow, search out the places that look like they have been around for 50 years, and you’re halfway to finding that secret spot.

Alex Fan: All Abundance

Alex Fan is an artist, curator, brand ambassador, marathon runner, MMA enthusiast, and Chinatown legend. While it might sound like I’m describing a whole team of people, I assure you I’m talking about one man in gorgeously pleated trousers.

When it comes to Hong Kong, the abundance of food can be overwhelming. There is so much to eat in such a dense city. The constant movement, blaring lights, and sense of overstimulation can be hard to battle when trying to feed your hunger. When I’m in Hong Kong, I feel that it’s safe to walk into any little shop and have a decent meal. However, there are just a few things that you need to look out for to tick off all the boxes:

  • A menu that isn’t in English. If they do have an English menu, it is separate and limited.
  • When you ask for the English menu, they have no patience (great sign).
  • Cutlery slides out onto the table. It can also be served with hot water for washing.
  • Busy with locals and people sharing tables.
  • Handwritten specials and notes everywhere.

When I do find myself in Hong Kong, these are my must-have dishes to fuel my many steps walking the city:

  • Roasted Pigeon or Zha Bok Gop (炸乳鴿): Eaten with your hands and dipped into a salt and pepper mix. 
  • Curry fish ball or Gaa Lei Jyu Daan (咖喱魚蛋): This can be ordered from any cha chaa teng (茶餐廳) and is always good. Even the 7-Eleven version is delicious. Drowned in sauce to be eaten with a toothpick.
  • Fish Siu Mai, or simply Siu Mai (燒賣): Another Hong Kong classic that is also amazing from 7-Eleven. Usually doused in soy sauce and eaten with a toothpick. The streets of Mong Kok and Yau Ma Tei offer plenty of great versions.
  • Steam Rice rolls and Siu Mai with peanut sauce and soy sauce: An easy dish that can be picked up and eaten on the go with a toothpick. Found in Mong Kok and Yau Ma Tei, but there’s also a great spot in Causeway Bay.
  • Roast Goose and Pork: Can be found in many spots across Hong Kong. A particularly great one is Kam’s Roast Goose in Wan Chai.
  • Wonton Noodles, shrimp roe noodle and Pork liver: My favourite meal that can do no wrong, especially when using some yàuh ja gwái to dip in the broth (油炸鬼). I recommend any Mak’s Noodle location.
  • Beef Brisket or any Offal Noodle soup: For anyone like myself who loves all forms of innards. Hong Kong has endless options to choose from.
  • Under the Bridge Crab: The quality has dropped off recently, but it is still a favourite due to nostalgia. Located in Causeway Bay, swimming in fried chillies and garlic.
  • Macaroni Soup with Ham or Fo Teoi Tung Fan (火腿通粉): A strange dish, but so great. A simple, hearty soup dish that seems wrong but tastes so right.
  • Additionally, there’s a whole bunch of seafood from Ming Kee Restaurant in the back streets of Wan Chai.

If you can visit a cha chaan teng (茶餐廳) in the daytime, have a lemon ice tea, HK milk tea, or a yuen yeung (鴛鴦) with a dish selected from a never-ending laminated menu. Make sure to sit shoulder to shoulder with a stranger. Walk off all the food through the streets of Hong Kong before gathering a couple of friends for dinner. Try to visit a dai pai dong (大牌檔), get drunk on a whole bunch of Blue Girl beer and smoke some cheap cigarettes.

4. The Reccies

To make sure you start eating like you’re a true Hongkonger, we’ve listed all the recommendations below. Now all that’s left is to get out there, whether in Sydney or HK, and get to eating!

Honourable mentions not listed in the article

Thanks to everyone who took part in this! Make sure to follow them all to see what they’re up to next. We have more how-to guides on the way, so keep your eyes peeled here. 

All photos for “How To Eat Like You’re From Hong Kong” were taken and come courtesy of Johanna Ng. All other images were provided by the writers or sourced from Tripadvisor and Google reviews.

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