- Before you go to Hong Kong, you need to know about food.
Hong Kong is a foodie city.
Food runs this city.
The food you'll find here, it's Cantonese food,
southern Chinese style food.
Cantonese food, it's made for sharing.
It comes in large portions for families to eat together.
The quintessential meal in Hong Kong is dim sum.
Dim sum was invented in southern China,
but I think really perfected here in Hong Kong.
If you wanna check out my favorite dim sum in Hong Kong,
it's at Maxim's Palace in City Hall.
It's right here.
It's this big banquet-style dim sum restaurant.
What have I got here?
I've got shumai.
Shrimp dumplings.
Pretty good.
And so, what I like about this place, they do cart service,
so the dim sum comes around on carts.
There's English on the carts, and you order something
and then they stamp this card,
and that's how you pay at the end,
is by how many things they've stamped.
Then they come in different sizes.
The different sizes equate to the different prices.
When you're ready, you just call out and say
that you want a bill and hold this up.
The tea, they give two pots here,
these nice stainless steel pots.
This one's got tea in it, ooh.
And then this one just has hot water in it,
if you want to dilute the tea because it got too strong.
Now also if you like soy sauce in dim sum restaurants,
you need to ask for it in Hong Kong
because it does not come on the table.
This comes with the serving chopsticks as well, and,
oh I will point out that if you want to eat here,
they do this thing where there's a machine out front
and you have to push and say how many people are dining,
and then you get a number, and then they call the numbers
based upon how big your table is.
So, if you're coming here on a Saturday or Sunday,
get here, we got here at 9:45
and we were seated at about 10:40,
so about an hour wait if you get here before 10.
If you get here at 11, good luck.
You'll probably be eating for dinner.
Weekdays are pretty good too.
If you come around 10:00 a.m. on a weekday,
probably no wait, you'll just walk right in.
See and what I love about dim sum,
it's kind of like a movable feast.
And you really never know what you're gonna get,
because every time there's different things
on the carts that come by.
They might come, they might not come.
But what do we got here?
These are some egg yolk steamed buns.
These are some steamed custard buns, there's custard inside.
These are some shrimp rolls.
These are some shrimp shumai.
I think I showed you those earlier.
These, some of my favorite,
one of my favorite dim sum items,
and I judge dim sum restaurants by three items.
Their shumai, their cha siu bao,
which is their steamed barbecue pork bun,
and their har gow, which is a shrimp dumpling,
which we don't have yet.
I'm hoping it comes by.
Mm.
It's really good.
It's moist, it's tender.
A lot of times the dim sum, yeah,
so that's the barbecue pork.
This is just kind of a doughy thing.
And a lot of times the dim sum, mm,
you know, the dim sum will be cold and hard.
But what I love about this place
is even though it comes around on carts,
it's still fresh and hot and delicious.
Mm.
That's really flavorful.
And what do you do if, like, across the room,
you see a cart, that I see, like, over there,
and it has my har gow on it, what do I do?
I just pick this up and I walk over there with my card.
I get the har gow, they stamp it,
and then I can come back to my table.
So, you could do the same.
Yay, my har gow is here now.
That kinda rhymes, doesn't it?
But hey, this is like the quintessential dim sum dish.
And it helps to learn a few of these phrases
if you come to dim sum, 'cause actually
the lady that was bringing this around,
she was just walkin' around sayin' har gow,
har gow, har gow, har gow.
She wasn't saying shrimp dumpling, shrimp dumpling.
Har gow, then I say har gow, then I get,
ooh, some delicious har gow.
And you can tell, it's still steaming,
like this is fresh out of the steamer.
Delicious.
Let's get a little bit of soy sauce on it.
Mm.
Ooh.
You know, and it's like, it's just a shrimp dumpling.
I'm really lame on my chopstick skills here.
This is pathetic.
But, this is what's inside the dumpling.
You can see there's shrimp.
But there are some other, like,
seasonings and spices and things like that.
Really delicious.
Mm.
Hot, fresh, flavorful.
This har gow is a reason to come here by itself.
And since I, hey, here's a doily,
and since I lost the skin, well,
mm, that goes down that way.
Okay, so it's dessert time.
We're gonna start with this one.
This is the custard wrapped in a
translucent skin of some sort.
You can see in there.
If I don't drop it.
There's some custard in the skin.
Mm.
This one's kinda weird.
I mean, the custard's good, but,
I don't know that I like the translucent skin.
I think I like the custard when it has
a little bit more dough by it.
This is almost like eating custard by itself, so,
maybe I'll come back to that in a moment.
This is like a lava custard bun.
This is kind of a new thing to dim sum restaurants,
and I first had this at Koi Palace in San Francisco.
By the way, if you wanna know
what my favorite dim sum restaurant in the whole world is,
it's Koi Palace in San Francisco.
I think they have some of the best dim sum.
Their environment is not as nice as this place,
and it's not cart-based.
So I like that it is cart-based here.
That's the first place I had a lava bun.
So we're gonna open this up.
Come in here and take a look at this as we open this.
So this custard, it's much more runny in consistency,
instead of being thick.
So it's like a thin egg custard, and they call it lava
'cause when it's really hot and steamy,
it's been sittin' here for about 10 minutes,
it flows like lava.
Mm.
And this, it's really flavorful.
It's salty, and sweet, kinda together.
It's really pretty good.
And in addition to the custard buns,
the tea is really good too.
The jasmine tea, so make sure you drink
copious amounts of tea.
And, so some people, like they review Maxim's,
say well, you know, none of the dim sum here
is the best of any dim sum.
But something that they do well,
I'll call your attention over to that way, is the view.
The view here is the best out there on Hong Kong Harbor,
which you'll recall means fragrant harbor.
When you go to pay at most sit-down restaurants,
they'll bring you the bill.
If you put in some money,
and they bring you back the change,
they'll generally hold it with the change there for you.
You'll take the change you want
and you leave whatever you want for the tip,
so just know they're not gonna
leave that change to sit there for you.
They'll be holding until you take what you want,
and whatever you leave is theirs.
A must-drink in Hong Kong is Hong Kong milk tea.
It's a specialty of Hong Kong, and, mm,
different than Thai iced tea.
It doesn't use condensed milk, it uses evaporated milk.
And often on the menu, they'll call it stocking milk tea
because they used to make it through stockings.
If you want to dine, or drink,
at one of the original places for this Hong Kong milk tea,
it's called Lan Fong Yuen.
It is right under the Central-Mid-Levels escalator
right by Graham Street and, mm, it's pretty tasty.
I will point out, they don't have any English
and they have two lines.
The big long line, that's to seat inside.
The short line on the left, just hop in that one
if you wanna take it to go.
Go up, say you want a milk tea.
23 Hong Kong dollars.
And while you're here, you can explore some of the produce
and outdoor markets up in this neighborhood.
For a quintessential Hong Kong dining experience from old,
dine at some of the dai pai dong.
These are the street stalls, and they've been outlawed
throughout actually most of Hong Kong,
but you'll find them in a few neighborhoods
around the Central-Mid-Levels escalator
and also around the Temple Street Night Market.
They often set up at night time, and you can dine
just at one of these tables out on the street.
One type of Hong Kong cuisine
that's really popular is roast meats.
You'll see little cafes and restaurants
with roast meats all over the city.
One of the most famous, and it's more of
a high-end restaurant than a little shop, it's Yung Kee.
They specialize in the roast goose.
We have the two-meat plate, roast goose and barbecue pork.
One of the great things here,
you can specify what kind of the goose you want.
So actually, we got the part of the goose
that has less bones, 'cause one of the things I hate
with goose or duck is a lot of bones.
Mm.
Like I have, mm, a small little bone.
But what do you do with the bones?
Eh, just put 'em on your saucer plate.
They've got napkins.
It's really quite tasty, quite flavorful.
And, this is the barbecue pork.
Mm.
It has almost a, like a honey flavor.
But not really honey, but that's the flavor
of the barbecue pork, and then here,
I've got a wonton noodle to go with it.
Some soup, some little noodles, and some rice.
If you want some quick and cheap Cantonese food,
you can visit the Canteen.
It's like a Hong Kong-style cafeteria.
You can see there's a couple of chickens
hangin' there in the window.
Typically how this works is you get a roast meat
and some rice, maybe a vegetable, maybe some soup.
It'll be pretty cheap and quick.
In addition to Canteen, there's Cafe Coral,
and MX are some pretty solid options.
Cheap quick Cantonese food.
So for dessert in Hong Kong, you should get mangoes.
As you can tell, this place I'm at
has a lotta mango stuff behind me.
This place is called Hiu Lau Shan,
but there's a number of different mango cafes in Hong Kong.
Another one is called Honeymoon Dessert.
Definitely stop by one of these places
and get lots of mango stuff.
What we have here, this is called the Mango Delight.
It's got fresh mangoes, mango puree,
coconut milk, and some purple rice.
And then right next to it here, we have the mango pudding
that either has some condensed or evaporated milk.
I love mango pudding.
And if you can't make it to one of these cafes,
well you can get this at almost any dim sum restaurant
for dessert afterwards.
Mm.
And a good, see this is a good mango pudding,
because it's not just pudding,
but you can actually see there's, like,
chunks of actual mango in the mango pudding.
Mm, it has a good mango flavor to it.
And so if we come in here to this mango puree,
with the coconut, mm, this is cold, refreshing,
for a hot humid day walking around Hong Kong.
And then you get down here to this purple rice.
Look at that purple rice right there.
Purple, it's a good word to say.
Mm.
And it just adds a very interesting
texture to the whole thing.
The coconut milk gives a creamy taste to the mango,
so definitely check out some mango desserts in Hong Kong.
For another classic Hong Kong dessert,
mm, classic maybe isn't the right word,
this is fairly new Hong Kong dessert,
but it's spreading like wildfire, or like wild egg puffs.
It's an egg puff.
It's kind of like a waffle.
We got this one from Mammy Pancake
here on Temple Street Night Market.
Also a Hong Kong milk tea.
Mm.
But this is their most popular,
it's the salted egg egg puff, so,
mm, bite into that, and each one of these little puffs
is filled with a little bit of salted egg.
Mm, mm.
It's hot.
It's fresh, mm, and,
this one's not too sweet.
If you like sweet, they've got other ones
that have, like, banana and chocolate.
This one's a little more savory.
A good snack in between meals.
The 17th thing to know about food in Hong Kong
is about Hong Kong cafes.
Hong Kong cafes are not like cafes
any place else in the world.
They are definitely a restaurant variety onto their own.
They sell almost everything under the roof
from toast to instant noodles to barbecue meat
to congee to curry steak to desserts
to even this thing you're looking at here,
which is a boiled egg in hot condensed milk, wow.
And if you wanna know more about Hong Kong cafes,
well I've got a whole segment on it.
It's number nine in my Hong Kong Travel Tips video.
You can find a link the upper right
or in the description below to watch it.
We've got more videos.
If you'd like to know more information about Hong Kong,
you'll find links in the description,
or you can click one of these videos
to watch more about Hong Kong.
So, I won't say goodbye because I'll see you
in the next video.
See you.