[Narrator] For a look at how many Hong Kong residents start their day,
Fuchsia takes Steve to a popular breakfast spot of long standing.
No sign of cappuccino and croissants here.
The patrons of Lin Heung break their fast with strong tea and dim sum.
[Fuchsia Dunlop] So, Steve, this is Lin Heung or "Lotus Fragrance," and it's one of the last remaining old Hong Kong tea houses.
It was founded in the 1920s although it has existed at a number of different locations since then.
And as you can see at 8:00 in the morning, it's already full of people reading the papers,
drinking tea and eating their dim sum and dumplings before they go off to work.
[Fuchsia Dunlop] It actually opens at 6 o'clock in the morning and it already gets pretty busy! Yeah. [Chef Steve Jilleba] Busy now!
[Fuchsia Dunlop speaking Chinese]
This is po lei', or Pu'er tea, which is one of the favorites for drinking with dim sum.
It's kind of a mature tea and it has quite an intense flavor, you'll see.
They pour some tea into this, just to wash the cups....
As you can see, there's no menu to order from,
and that we've just got the old system of people coming around with trolleys.
The kind of the heyday of this kind of teahouse was sort of 1920s, 1940's and then....
After the Second World War, when a lot of people in Hong Kong, they were living in very cramped accommodation, life was quite tough,
a lot of people didn't even have kitchens at home.
And so this kind of tea house was a cheap place to meet your friends, even have a family meal,
do a bit of business....
Let's have a look.
[Speaking Chinese]
Pig liver.
[Speaking Chinese]
[Fuchsia Dunlop] Some beef balls, would you like? [Chef Steve Jilleba] Yeah.
[Fuchsia Dunlop] Beef balls, thanks.
[Ambient noise]
[Speaking Chinese]
Thank you. Oooooh.
[Chef Steve Jilleba] What is this one, here?
[Fuchsia Dunlop] This is, I think, pork and shiitake mushroom and fish [...],
more which is one of those Chinese delicacies with a sort of crisp texture.
Slippery crisp texture.
We have this a piece of card just under the table top,
and here that's "small snacks," "medium sized snacks," "big snacks" with different prices,
and that's "special snacks," and that's sorta little pots of rice,
so they could just mark off how many you've had and just total it all up at the end.
[Chef Steve Jilleba] That's how they keep track of it. [Fuchsia Dunlop] Yeah.
[Fuchsia Dunlop] So, chicken as well. Chicken and pork and mushroom.
This kind of cake-y thing is made from slivers of Asian radish
and glutinous rice flour, with little bits of barbecued meat and dried shrimp.
Sometimes they fry it. And here, it's just served steamed, yeah.
And these are Siu Mai dumplings with mushroom on top.
Fish balls. So, yeah.
So, this is Cheung fun — that slithery rice pasta and it's got fresh prawns in it.
And a soy sauce dressing.
And this is one of those dim sums that I think Westerners often don't really like,
because they find the texture at first may be a bit slithery.
you always have a huge variety of different snacks.
Of course, it's the kind of thing you couldn't possibly do at home.....
because you know you might be able to make one or two of these dumplings but this is really restaurant food.
So, each one you know you have just two or three little things on the plate,
and also different cooking methods.
So, here we've got a lot of steamed ones, but they'll also come round with some pan-fried, deep-fried, other sorts of snack.
So, this is really a kind of them working people's cafe. So, people come here for breakfast,
read the papers, catch up with their friends, before going to the office,
but later I'll take you to another sort of dim sum place where you have the same kind of tradition of snacks,
and of "Yum cha," which literally means to drink tea and it describes the whole ritual.
But, sort of more peaceful, more kind of restaurant-like setting.
Where people might go for a business lunch or for lunch with friends.
This is the very casual end of the scale.
How is the [...] bao?
[Chef Steve Jilleba] This is very good. Has nice texture. Just little parts of meat in it.
So, I imagine that's fairly healthy. It has the radish base and so on.
[Fuchsia Dunlop] Steamed, yeah with just a little bit of these, yeah.
You know, I think a lot of Westerners will be used to having sweet things for breakfast
like a [....] chocolate or a croissant with jam or something like that,
but in China, people often have these savory things for breakfast — the things that, you know....
maybe meat or..... you know pickled vegetables in different areas of China, so.....
But in Hong Kong, this is very good breakfast food.
[Fuchsia Dunlop] An enormous.....! [Chef Steve Jilleba] I know! That's that's a meal in itself!
[Chef Steve Jilleba] Now, let's see. There's so many things inside this. [Fuchsia Dunlop] Yeah.
[Chef Steve Jilleba] Some shrimp and ham, pork and chicken, quail egg.....
Pork, chicken.....
Wow, it's amazing the amount of filling in there.
And the different ingredients. That's excellent. That's really good.