Can HK Restaurants Survive the Pandemic?

Hong Kong's new normal of restaurants having 50 percent capacity

This morning (well late morning) I ventured to a place near where I live that just organizes pop-ups, or guest chef promotions on a regular basis, with chefs from around the world.

However with the coronavirus pandemic and travel restrictions, the owner had to quickly switch gears -- and in fact he did several months ago already -- and instead do collaborations with young up-and-coming local chefs who are keen to try some new culinary ideas.

Chef Eric Raty with his blueberry pie

The owner was telling me how business was very difficult these days, as his space is not open everyday, and with customers not really having an appetite to sit down to a multi-course dinner, he has moved very quickly to have a bake sale today, his first.

I walked over to the place just after it opened and it seemed to be doing a brisk business, with a lot of people already pre-ordered items that were packaged in large brown paper bags.

I hadn't, but came prepared with my own takeaway boxes and the chef who has a Michelin two-starred restaurant, personally packed my boxes with baked treats like gluten-free chocolate walnut cookies, a blueberry and cardamon pie, and a small Finnish tart.

Later after lunch I had one of the cookies -- it was so delicious and overwhelmingly chocolately that I could not finish the second cookie, which is very rare for me to do. It was just so delicious that texted the chef to tell him that.

The owner was there and we didn't talk much because he was really busy preparing tea and coffee for guests who were sitting inside and enjoying their pastries. I was worried about him because before the bake sale,  he had told me that he needed to find ways to make money fast, otherwise he could only sustain his business for another two months.

Gluten-free chocolate walnut cookies were for sale today

That is the reality of a lot of restaurants in Hong Kong now. One large restaurant group that has 21 restaurants in the city and another exclusively for takeout, and is under a lot of financial pressure to ensure its over 1,000 staff still have jobs.

However, one local group has decided to shut down all 48 of its restaurants for two weeks "for everyone's health and safety", the group said in its Facebook page on Friday.

Tao Heung Holdings has a variety of Chinese restaurants like Tao Heung, Pier 88, Hak Ka Hut, Chao Inn, Chung's Cuisine, and Tai Cheong, famous for its egg tarts.

Meanwhile a lot of places quickly implemented the 50 percent capacity rule, with some restaurants literally taping off tables or removing them on Saturday before the 6pm deadline. Other places had signs outside the doors explaining because of the strict rules they could only have a maximum of three tables at any one time.

One of Tao Heung's restaurants before it closed for two weeks

It will be interesting to see if the implementation of these strict regulations will indeed lower the number of cases in the next few days; the odd thing is that karaoke establishments fall under the restaurant license but how do you prevent people from sitting too closely together in a small room and they are sharing microphones...

Are people still going to these places when they should be social distancing?

Or is now the time to sing your heart out as a stress reliever? It's a dilemma.

Fact of the Day: Hongkongers Love Oil and Butter

This Hong Kong-style French toast can have as much as 420 calories

OK finally a blog post something not extradition bill related!

Did you know Hongkongers eat enough French toast to cover the Earth's circumference every year?

It's quite the shocking statistic that has nutritionists worried.

Chicken thighs -- as big as your hand are a HK favourite

It comes from an online survey by a health platform called HealthyD.

Other popular snacks? French fries, fried chicken thighs, egg tarts, and pineapple buns with butter, the usual oily and buttery stuff that taste so good but clog your arteries.

"Hong Kong's favourite foods are deep-fried with a lot of oil and usually served with butter and syrup. Excessive consumption could lead to obesity, high blood pressure and heart disease," said Cynthia Wong Oi-se, a senior nutritionist at NutraCare Consultancy.

It's scary to hear Hongkongers eat 320 million servings of French toast annually -- basically bread soaked in a batter of eggs and milk (sometimes with peanut butter slathered in between) and then deep-fried and served with syrup. In case you were calorie counting it has 420 calories. That means you'd have to run 5K to burn that off.

Egg tarts are another favourite snack in Hong Kong

While French toast was the number one favourite for 57 percent of people surveyed, the second most preferred snack was French fries which have 539 calories, followed by fried chicken thighs (431 calories), toast with condensed milk and peanut butter (405 calories), egg tarts (230 calories), and pineapple buns (421 calories).

In terms of drinks, 55 percent like to have milk tea, which can have 140 calories. This was followed by lemon tea and lemon water. Wong warned one glass of lemon tea can have as much as 6 teaspoons of sugar in it. Yikes!

Which all probably explains why in a citywide health survey released by the government in 2017 that half of Hongkongers aged 15 and above were overweight or obese.

Milk tea can have as many as 140 calories because of sugar

The online survey also found Hongkongers typically visit cha chaan tengs (where all these tempting snacks can be ordered) on alternate days, with 88 percent of those surveyed saying they eat there 3.6 times a week.

People either really have a hankering for these snacks or they are very keen to show they are proud of the local food!

Becks Does Egg Tarts

David Beckham gets to eat a lot of egg tarts in this "micro-movie"

Oh boy. Someone please tell David Beckham not to speak Mandarin.

Sands Resorts Macao has released a "micro-movie" featuring the English former footballer turned spokesman for a price, who seems to come to Macau often.

Of course football is involved in one scene!

This time he sneaks out of the hotel in search of the famed Macanese egg tarts -- egg tarts with buttery, flaky pastry and the custard is seared on top. So good.

So Beckham jumps into a cab -- but the driver doesn't even recognize him and Beckham asks him to take him somewhere to eat egg tarts.

The driver takes him to a place, but they don't seem the same as the ones he had eaten before and the cook gets really angry...

Here -- watch it yourself:

https://www.venetianmacao.com/campaigns/db-video-campaign.html

It's a crazy mish mash of English, Cantonese and really bad Mandarin on Beckham's part. So bad it needs to be subtitled to understand what he's saying.

More yummy egg tarts and a selfie with Becks

But no one seems to care because it's Becks!

Another ploy to get more Chinese into the casinos -- no no -- I mean eat more Macanese egg tarts!

Egg Tarts and Dumplings

Here's two trays of the dumplings we made

Over the Christmas and New Year holidays, I tried to do some decent cooking because in Hong Kong, the kitchens are small and mine is not very well stocked with ingredients let alone cooking equipment.

I managed to try a brownie recipe from Jamie Oliver's Christmas Cookbook. It called for dark chocolate, white chocolate, sour cherries and I added nuts in there. It turned out a bit gooier than I expected, but it wasn't too sweet thanks to the sour cherries.

For our New Year's Eve party, my visiting nephew told us he would contribute to the potluck by making egg tarts and we were surprised and skeptical. Could he really make them? He said he had made it before and found a recipe online.

Some of the finished egg tarts that tasted really good!

On the day I watched him make it, carefully mashing the butter with a fork, then mixing it with flour, letting it set in the fridge, and then making the egg custard. When the dough was ready, my niece and I helped him shape the dough into each of the holes of the cupcake pan which was a tedious process, before pouring the egg custard in and then baking it in the oven.

In the end it turned out quite well! One of my uncles who doesn't normally eat sweet things had one and a half egg tarts before dinner. The crust was a bit tough, but it was strong enough to hold the egg custard, which was actually quite delicious.

On New Year's Day, we planned to make dumplings. We had some minced pork but not enough meat, so my mom came up with the idea of adding leftover turkey meat that she shredded by hand.

Added to the meat was minced garlic, chopped spinach, mushrooms, some oil, sesame oil, Chinese wine and salt.

My mom and I started wrapping them, and then my niece and nephew came back from shopping and they started helping out too, the first time for them to wrap dumplings. They learned pretty quickly and soon we were all done, with a few wrappers left over.

And the dumplings tasted so good -- they tasted even better thanks to the roasted turkey meat, and with a hint of ginger was very tasty!

So if you ever wondered what to do with leftover turkey -- make turkey dumplings! And always use the carcass to either make a broth or congee. Your stomach will love you for it!

Macanese Surly Service

Delicious and hearty pork chop vermicelli noodle soup at Choi Un Kei

I spent the day in Macau today and a friend who lives there took me around Coloane for a bit of sightseeing.

It's a stark contrast from the shiny tall and large-scale casino resort buildings, a reminder of what most of Macau used to look like.

The streets are narrow and quiet, and the houses are proportionally small. They are Chinese style, with a large living room area on the ground floor and then stairs leading up to the bedrooms.

Shops selling fruits and vegetables can be found, along with beauty salons, boutiques and cafes. Apparently not much development happens here because the land is not free hold.

Don't mess with the owner! (back)

We went to one famous small cha chaan teng called Choi Un Kei located in a non-descript shack. It's been around for around 30 years and the husband and wife still run it.

However you have to have a thick skin coming to this local eatery because the husband is a short-tempered man who has no patience in explaining there is no printed menu, that they only serve pork chop or chicken fillet with either a bowl of vermicelli or macaroni in soup. The place also sells some buns, but by the time we arrived, they were sold out.

At first he didn't seem to want us to come into the place -- we heard that if too many people show up he may get stressed out, which is understandable. But we sat down anyway with my friend's friend who just happened to be there.

We sat for a while, but the owner didn't come by the take our order and my friend's friend had to advise us to be patient. Eventually he did wander near our table and in her sweetest voice, my friend's friend politely listed what we wanted to eat.

First came my milk tea, which was heavy on the milk, but that was perfect for me, as I don't usually drink it, but needed the caffeine. Not long after my order of pork chop with vermicelli came.

The pork chop is on the bone, and is seasoned with pepper, a few spices and a touch of garlic, and it's delicious and not too tough. It's on top of a bowl of vermicelli, that has cubes of cabbage, potato and tomato in it.

Scrumptious Macanese tarts from Lord Stow

Even though my friend's bowl with macaroni instead came much later, she finished hers before me, though her glass of hot lemon water didn't come until we paid the bill!

Meanwhile a mainland couple sat down at another table and obviously didn't know the rules here and were chided by the owner for not knowing there's no menu and not clearly hearing what was available; the wife kept asking for ho fun, or thick rice noodles and he already told her once that he didn't have those noodles.

We quickly got out of there before the chances of a brawl happening...

A short walk away was Lord Stow's Bakery, so we popped in for a look. They make all kinds of baked goods, from breads and buns to cheesecakes and of course the legendary Macanese egg tarts.

Why not? So I bought half a dozen for 50 MOP and while we were there, another group of guys didn't realize that one dozen of tarts would be 100 MOP.

One of the women working there chided them for not having visited the shop in a long time otherwise they would have known the prices had gone up!

Ah surly service. The Macanese who don't really care to have repeat customers still get them anyway...

Choi Un Kei

Lg Pres. A Ramalho Eanes s/n

Coloane
(853) 2888 2064

Lord Stow's Bakery

1 Rua do Tassara

Coloane
(853) 2888 2534

Picture of the Day: Black Sesame Egg Tarts

An interesting Chinese dessert variation -- black sesame egg tarts

This morning we went to Golden Paramount Seafood Restaurant in Richmond for dim sum with some relatives.

The selection featured the usual fare of steamed shrimp dumplings, steamed char siu buns, steamed pork ribs with black bean sauce, pan-fried taro cake, and steamed turnip cake.

We also ordered some different dishes like fish shoulder -- that's what it's called but didn't know fish had shoulders! -- that was deep-fried and then braised, a sanitized version of stinky tofu that was hardly smelly but was deep-fried and slightly crunchy on the outside, soft inside, and a fresh bean curd sheets with bok choy.

But what really caught our attention was one of the desserts the staff were carrying around in trays from table to table -- black sesame egg tarts.

They don't look appealing being black, but the taste is pretty good, the black sesame taste combined with a slight hint of custard complete with a flaky pastry around it.

It wasn't too sweet and had a similar texture to egg custard tarts but lighter.

None of us had ever seen a dessert variation like that before which is why we had to take a picture of it and blog about it!

Golden Paramount Seafood Restaurant

8071 Park Road
Richmond
604 278 0873