Despite Warnings Crowds Flock to Flower Markets

This afternoon Mongkok people were busy buying flowers

It's ironic that the Hong Kong government cancelled the Lunar New Year fairs, open-air markets selling flowers, snacks and festive decorations when instead people flocked to the flower market in Mongkok today.

Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan Siu-chee said yesterday it was a tough decision to make to cancel the fairs.

Chan says cancelling fairs was a difficult decision

"From a health perspective, we want to control the epidemic as soon as possible so we cannot hold large gatherings," she said.

However, judging from the hordes of people in Mongkok's flower area known as fa hui, it perhaps would have been better to hold the fair anyway.

"How are they supposed to do crowd control in the middle of the road? Why can't we just set up the fairs with social-distancing measures and vaccine bubble requirements?" asked a 62-year-old mandarin plant vendor surnamed Leung.

"It's a big headache. We were all looking forward to selling our produce at the fairs, but now we have to make last-minute changes on how to distribute tens of thousands of mandarin plants."

What a logistical nightmare.

In the meantime the good news is that there were only five new cases of Covid-19 recorded, yesterday there were nine. 

Children can get vaccinated as early as next week

Children as young as five can get the Sinovac vaccine from next week, while those wanting the Pfizer BioNTech one will have to wait until after Chinese New Year.

One health expert is calling for a review of coronavirus measures, saying perhaps the use of partition boards are not helpful in terms of air flow and that tables should be more spaced apart.

Small eateries cannot place tables 1.5 metres apart and instead use partitions as a bid to be able to have more customers, but Dr Gabriel Leung of Hong Kong University says the partitions could block ventilation. He also adds when dine-in services resume, perhaps restaurants could open until 9pm... 

Meanwhile my relatives still refuse to get vaccinated even though that will mean not being able to dine in restaurants if they don't have at least one jab when the social-distancing measures are lifted.

"Then we just won't go to restaurants," she said. 

Maybe partitions aren't a good thing anymore?

While they often eat at home for dinner, they frequent eateries like cha chaan tengs and sometimes have dim sum for lunch, but in the next few weeks they won't be able to do it at all. There will also be a push later for people to have two jabs in order to enter restaurants. Then what?

"We'll see when that happens," she replied.

Completely impractical and irrational... but then again so is this government that is making out Omicron to be a deathly virus and refuses to live with the reality that Covid-19 is here to stay...

A Pho to Remember?

Dinner last night -- rare beef pho at Chua Lam's Pho in Central

Yesterday my colleague and I finished an assignment in Central just before 6pm and she was wondering where to get a cheap bite to eat.

I suggested Tsui Wah, the cha chaan teng chain, but she said "no" right away. Then I remembered the famous food writer Chua Lam had opened a pho shop nearby and suggested we check it out.

Food critic and restaurateur Chua Lam at his restaurant

Called Chua Lam's Pho, with the tagline "A bowl of pho to remember", is on Wellington Street in a two-storey building with minimalist decor, complemented with beer bottles cut to have plants in them. There's a variety of seating and even more upstairs so we went up to get a table near the corner. The menu is pretty straight forward.

If you want to splurge, there's the "special beef pho" for HK$128, apparently with wagyu beef, but we stuck to the "rare beef pho" for HK$88.

Or you can have a basic beef pho for HK$68 and add toppings like raw beef, beef shank, brisket, tendon, beef ball, and tripe.

There are also other dishes like fried spring rolls, or rice paper salad rolls with fish and mango, or Thai pomelo salad -- what is that doing there! We ordered a dish of stir fried morning glory.

While we were waiting for our food to arrive, we sipped on the complimentary glasses of water and quickly realized they had a sweet peanut flavour! It's obviously a ploy to get customers to order drinks as well, which is what we did -- a young coconut for my colleague, a preserved plum and lime soda for me.

The ground floor interior of the shop

The food arrived quickly and in large bowls, and come with small cups filled with basil leaves, bean sprouts, lime wedge and fresh chillis. When the place first opened, everyone was raving about the soup base, and I have to say it has a round, flavourful beef taste, and wasn't oily.

Meanwhile the portion of morning glory was much larger than we expected and a bit on the spicy side, but still delicious.

My drink had a fake green syrup in it, probably a lime syrup which was completely redundant, while my colleague enjoyed her drink and the thick coconut meat inside.

In the end our bill came to HK$360 for two, a cheap and cheerful dinner.

Chua Lam's Pho
UG/F, 15-25 Wellington Street
Central
2325 9117

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!

Breakfast at The Pen

Scrambled eggs in between thick slices of bread for breakfast at The Peninsula

Ah breakfast. The essential meal to start of the day.

What better place to indulge in breakfast than the Lobby of the Peninsula Hong Kong.

A relative was staying at the Sheraton and I suggested we meet across the street at the iconic hotel with 90 years of history.

The breakfast menu has a lot of choice, but can be expensive, with a full breakfast costing over HK$300! You could also have congee with pork spare ribs and preserved vegetables, granola, instant noodles with meats -- a kind of glorified cha chaan teng dish.

French toast using brioche bread was on the menu -- I should try that next time!

In the end I settled for New Zealand scrambled eggs sandwich. It arrived, with the crusts cut -- please don't! -- and very yellow eggs in between the white bread that had butter slathered on them.

The egg sandwich also came with three slices of cucumber and two of tomato...

This was definitely an indulging egg sandwich -- how many eggs were used to make it?! Nevertheless the bread was soft and buttery, the eggs quite fluffy too. Needless to say with a cup of latte it was a nice breakfast to catch up and enjoy the moment.

However, when we walked outside, it was pouring rain! Luckily I had a small umbrella and escorted my relative across the street to her hotel and then went on my way.

Picture of the Day: Hong Kong Style Milk Tea

Milk tea with condensed milk at the bottom

Every cha chaan teng in Hong Kong has its own secret recipe on how to make milk tea. It depends on what kind of tea leaves they use to brew the tea, how much milk is added, what kind of milk, and how much sugar.

As a result everyone has his or her own particular preferences of where they like to have their favourite caffeinated drink.

My friend recently took me to Wai Kee Noodle Cafe 维记加菲粉面 in Sham Shui Po where we had her favourite milk tea.

Milk tea champagne at Tsui Wah

Actually it's called 茶酒 or "milk tea wine" because it's a bit more expensive and smoother because at the bottom of the mug is a layer of condensed milk that is sweeter than the usual milk tea.

And it's so addictive. I couldn't stop drinking it, which of course left me feeling jittery afterwards from the strong tea and the extra sugar.

Well known cha chaan teng chain Tsui Wah has taken the idea of "milk tea wine" and calls it "milk tea champagne", even serving it in a glass bottle complete with a wine bucket with ice to keep it cool... and sophisticated for a cafe...

Picture of the Day: Temporary Bing Sutt

People at Vinexpo enjoying a bite to eat and a drink in a "bing sutt"

A large wine and spirits fair called Vinexpo is on right now in Hong Kong. It's a three-day event for people in the industry -- for wine producers to showcase their latest products, and for wholesalers, restaurants and hotels to see what will fit on their wine lists.

The show is being held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre and just outside the hall is a temporary "bing sutt" -- literally an "ice room", but is actually a traditional cold drinking house. They are the predecessor to the cha chaan teng, with its small tiled floors, hanging fans and folding chairs and menu items plastered on the walls.

Here the Hong Kong Tourism Board recreated one -- and it's a neat way to showcase local food culture for visitors overseas. They can have milk tea, a pineapple bun and a bowl of wonton noodles without having to go outside and deal with language issue.

The only fault here? The line was too long to even get a bite to eat -- which is the point of a bing sutt -- to be able to grab a quick snack and drink. That's because inside the exhibition hall there was no cafeteria to be found to buy a sandwich or even drinks.

When I was here yesterday I didn't have time (or the patience) to wait in line so I ate the power bar I happened to have with me and didn't eat some dumplings until I got back to the office at 4.30pm.

Maybe if I go early enough tomorrow I can finally try something in this "bing sutt"...