THE REAL EATS OF HONG KONG: My March Trip Yields this Exciting Six-Part Series

I had the great good fortune in March of touring Hong Kong for almost a week, led by people who really know the city—and, most importantly, people who were entirely willing to believe me when I said I wanted to eat like a Cantonese person! Usually, my hosts anywhere will say “yes” to the local question—and then proceed to serve me the things they think “Americans” will like. Not these Hong Kong guys! I was bobbing in a tide of snakes, and innards, and dried seafood, and rice gruels…all of the “real people” food that makes dining in this city such a gustatory, unmatchable thrill!

In fact, if I were you, I would probably move myself into Hong Kong planning gear right now. I don’t think tradition will ever go away in Hong Kong…but my sense is that it gets a little harder all the time to find it. Simple Cantonese restaurants are becoming fancier Cantonese restaurants; mom-and-pop Chinese “diners” are closing, much like the bouchons in Lyon, so that the urban planners may put up new 80-story apartment buildings (lower in Lyon!); the wine culture is taking hold, and many new restaurants are bending their food to match the wine influx; and ethnic food, once rare in Hong Kong, is definitely moving in at a rapid pace (at first it was things like fancy Italian restaurants, now it’s street food too):

Nevertheless, if you know what you’re doing…holy Confucius can you have a week of Cantonese feasting here (oh, Hong Kong does a great job of representing many other regional Chinese cuisines too, but its soul is Cantonese…so I choose to stick with that).

In five more segments over the next month or two, I’m going to show you five vital Cantonese themes of Hong Kong dining…the themes to live by…hoping powerfully, of course, that you’ll take my lead and start thinking about a Hong Kong visit in 2013 or 2014.

Here’s a photo montage of some of the treats I’ll be covering in the upcoming Hong Kong stories:

Now if you do go, you’re gonna need a hotel or two, for sure…and, Hong Kong is brilliant on that front as well!

Hong Kong has many parts, but central to the geographic dichotomy is this: old Kowloon (and its subsidiary neighborhoods) stands on the north side of the grand Hong Kong Harbour; Hong Kong Island, epicenter of the financial boom, stands on the south side of the Harbour (A ferry from one side to the other takes no more than five minutes).

During my trip, I split the difference. I started on the Kowloon side, at Hong Kong’s newest luxury hotel, the Hong Kong Ritz-Carlton. And though I love Ritz-Carltons all around the world…really and truly there has never been a Ritz-Carlton like this one. The main Ritz-Carlton company, headquartered in Chevy Chase, Maryland, has partnered with Sun Hung Kai Properties in Hong Kong, a titanic developer; together they have built (and it just opened two years ago) not only the tallest building in Hong Kong…but the tallest hotel in the world!

Hong Kong for decades has made even New Yorkers crane their necks to take in the altitudinal attitude, but that mostly took place on Hong Kong Island. The headline: as of March 2011 Kowloon’s Ritz-Carlton is cranier than anything on the other side! Most of the building is a ritzy office building…but the hotel occupies floors 102 to 118, including 312 guest rooms. My vertiginous room was on the 117th floor…gasp!…with a gorgeous view of the big boys back on the Hong Kong Island side.

And it’s gorgeous. I loved the combination of traditional Chinese and modern comfort in my room. In fact, I was freaked upon entering, after my 25-hour journey, to see the array of electronic options set among the warm bamboo. But guess what: I conquered every single one of them on first shot (a rare feat for me!). The intuitiveness built into this design is unique among well-equipped hotels!

Then there’s the Wander Factor: one beautiful hallway with one room after another. I also toured the five main restaurants, and kept finding extraordinary combinations of old motifs (particularly Chinese lamps), and modern dining/conference needs and sensibilities.

MY GALLERY OF RESTAURANT SHOTS IN THE RITZ-CARLTON, HONG KONG

I am equally enthusiastic about the hotels of the Hong Kong Island side. You don’t, of course, have the views of Hong Kong Island’s buildings…but you do feel smack dab middle in the fierce financial capital that is Modern Hong Kong. Think of staying on this side, in the area called Central, as akin to a stay on Madison Ave./Fifth Ave. in New York City.

I’m in love with a number of these Hong Kong Island hotels, like the Mandarin Oriental. But on my first visit to Hong Kong 20 years ago, I stayed at the Island Shangri-La…which didn’t come far from matching its paradisaical name. It was my out-of-the-gate fave…so I’ve been eager to see how it has stood up over two decades…

Beautifully!

The only comment one might make is simply a note on changing styles. The atrium was all the rage in hotel design in March 1991, when the Island Shangri-La opened…and I can guarantee you that this was one of the most gorgeous atriums ever constructed. Today, the first-time visitor, walking past the dazzling splendor of the main lobby…

…may feel a bit of retro-shock when grabbing an elevator in the atrium. Fight it, say I…for this is still the most beautiful atrium I know of, ordained as it is with a breathtaking, 16-story Chinese landscape painting, set up in 250 panels of Chinese silk. The painting tells the story of China…in harmonious colors…and immediately grabs your focus from the atrium around it. I truly went to my elevator every day with excitement about another “viewing.”

The rooms are similarly spectacular, simultaneously Hong Kong and global, always tended by a sincere, earnest, gracious, polished staff (one night, after most store hours, a captain drove me around Hong Kong in a house car in search of a prescription I needed!).

Many of the rooms take in either the Harbour side, or the verdant back mountains of the Hong Kong Island shore which lead up to the spectacular Victoria Peak. I made the smart play: my room on the 47th had a big dose of Victoria Peak, and one glass wall exposing the Harbour as well.

Now, coming back to the gastronomic thread: You will find, in great hotels like the Island-Shangri-La, fancy Cantonese restaurants that soar way beyond street food, way beyond the focus of my gastro-study in March. Should the intrepid Funk-Seeker be tempted? Well, geez…when they invite me to one of these…can I say no? And I’m glad I didn’t…

This week, we’ll walk a bit on the glam side, before I settle down to my beloved funk over the next five postings. I think it’s instructive for you to see the differences.

The Summer Palace at the Island Shangri-La has two stars from Michelin, deservedly so. It is a beautiful restaurant, with its central conceit of a “summer palace”…

…replete with gorgeous china, cutlery, linens and truly soulful but accomplished service.

If you go…and I urge you to do so…you will find flavors and textures not so far from the Cantonese flavors and textures all over town. The difference is that these flavors are toned down somewhat: not so salty, not so fishy, not so oily…not as challenging for Americans, OR for the well-off Hong Kong locals who want to dine in a healthier, more elegant manner.

We started with the Crispy Ox-Brisket…and LOVED it!…one of the best BBQ dishes of the week (many ducks, pigs, geese and pigeons lay ahead!)…crunchy, juicy, melting, deeply flavored, all the good things simultaneously.

A great follow-up—and a classic example of this restaurant’s style—is the Bean Curd Sheets with Bamboo Pith and Black Beans…a good indication that funky ingredients can also inhabit the two-stars. I’m a lover of the dried bean curd that’s turned into thin, resilient sheets, AND of the fuzzy part of the bamboo shoot known as the pith. On my trip, of course, I hit tons of good textures out there in wild Hong Kong…but the hi-falutin’ delicacy and refinement of this textural bonanza had a lot to do with two-star reaching, I suspect. And that, of course, includes the plate arrangement.

Perhaps my favorite savory dish at Summer Palace was a simple thing, but brimming with luxury. The “real” Hong Kong is obsessed with dried seafood, all kinds of dried seafood—and some of it, like the much-loved dried scallops, or “conpoy,” can be quite expensive (if you get the good stuff). So the Summer Palace chef grabbed some high-quality conpoy, shredded it finely, and tossed it with an ultra-fresh bush of pea shoots.

To gild the lily, he folded into it one of those dark-brown, goopy-but-complex, almost gelatinous, umami-rich, lip-sticking sauces that the Cantonese so love to pair with expensive ingredients. Some might taste this dish and find it of low-level intensity. But if you’re reading the Cantonese cues right, you’re saying…”THIS is luxury!”

You would expect a two-star to be elevated at dessert time, no? So I must confess that the knock-out dessert of the week came my way at Summer Palace…and, though I might have seen variations of it in lesser restaurants, I don’t think any place but a luxury restaurant could pull this one off with such élan.

The dish is in that spectrum of fruity and/or custardy Chinese desserts that trap little chewy pearls inside. In the U.S., direct from Taiwan and its bubble teas, we are most used to seeing tapioca play the role of the pearls. But there’s also a big sago contingent; sago are pearls formed from a powdery starch gathered from the trunks of sago palms. This combination at Summer Palace was insanely delicious: a velvety mango custard, chewy sago pearls, and several types of fruit, including the exotic grapefruit variant pomelo.

Okay, just to give you the FULL story…I couldn’t resist ducking into another two-star restaurant on my trip, Celebrity…one that is also in a hotel (most of the multi-stars are in hotels), one that is very buzzy right now. There are twelve Michelin two-star restaurants in Hong Kong, seven of them Cantonese. From what I heard, and could tell…this one may be the most Cantonese of them all.

AND with luxury standards…though standards not nearly as lofty as those of the Summer Palace…just as standards of Celebrity’s Hotel Lan Kwai Fong fall short of hotel standards at the splendiferous Island Shangri-La.

But the real story here is the Chef, Cheng Kam Fu. Born not far from Hong Kong, Fu spent many years working for the late Hong Kong tycoon Lim Por-yen, before he started rising in the Hong Kong restaurant ranks. Today, he is one of Hong Kong’s culinary rock stars.

Here’s what I loved about his food: its cleanness and simplicity. The flavors are unmistakably Cantonese, but brought to a different level of elegance…usually not through adding to, but, instead, through stripping down.

His array of first courses, at my dinner, included the best Dry-Fried String Beans I’ve ever had, with the classic inclusion of minced pork; a simple touch put Fu’s on top—the use of wider beans.

I loved Fu’s use of dried seafood…from the brilliant dried oyster in lettuce leaf…

…to his wonderfully austere Dried Scallop Soup.

In both cases, the central ingredient is the star performer…and the chef is delighted to give center stage in the way that only a great chef can.

Next up in my meal was Fu’s most famous creation, something he started making twenty years ago: chicken wings stuffed with bird’s nest. The latter super-expensive ingredient usually floats in a bowl of soup, of course—making for what everyone agrees is one bland dish. But Fu, now oft-copied, uses the oddly-textured bird’s nest as a filling for fried chicken wings—which gives the bird’s nest strands a flavor to play against, and creates a unique, delightful texture at the center of a chicken wing.

Next up, it was dried seafood again—a lot of it!—as Fu presented Braised Assorted Superior Dried Seafood.

This particular plate involved dried abalone, dried sea cucumber, and dried shark’s fin…all served in the sexy-deep, goopy sauce that the Cantonese love so much with their luxury products.

The last big thrill of the meal was Fu’s Baby Pigeon—as crisp, deep, and delicious as any Chinese Roast Duck I’ve ever had.

You can see it all in these photos—the simplicity, the fundamentalism. What you cannot see is the depth of flavor in each of these fabulous dishes—a two-star turn on Cantonese food, to be sure, but more intensely flavored than the gentle Summer Palace turn.

Coming Up Soon:
Down and Dirty with Hong Kong’s Hot Pots and Clay Pots