Old School Chiu Chow Cuisine

The decor in Lok Hau Fook hasn't changed in over six decades!

This evening my relatives and I headed to Kowloon City to eat at one of their favourite haunts, Lok Hau Fook, a Chiu Chow restaurant that dates back 65 years. The decor inside has hardly changed, one of the walls features a giant dragon and phoenix, with a double happiness sign in between them for weddings, though probably no one celebrates their nuptials here anymore.

I heard some Hong Kong films have used this restaurant as a setting for scenes involving triads -- who knew they liked to hang out in old school Chiu Chow restaurants?

In front deep-fried crab mousse and shrimp balls in rear

On a Friday night, the restaurant is almost full and we take our seat -- we get cold very fast from the air conditioning and the fans blowing the cold air.

There's a lot of dishes to choose from, and my uncle already has in mind what he'd like to eat. He hasn't been here for many years and reels off some of his favourites to the waiter.

Pretty soon the lo sui duck arrives with some vinegar and it looks overcooked by it's not -- very tender and juicy, and flavourful from the master sauce. Underneath the thin slices of marinated duck are pieces of tofu that are equally delicious.

We also order some seasonal vegetables and choose chun choi, a Chiu Chow vegetable that is a skinny version of choi sum that was cooked in a broth together with chunks of radish and pork rib bits and ginger for flavour.

Super plump baby oysters in a rice soup with pork

Then came some deep-fried items -- a ball that was a combination of shrimp mousse mixed with finely diced water chestnut, and the a rectangular package of crab meat mousse. Both were so lightly deep-fried that their texture was very soft inside, the hot oil obviously fresh.

Probably one of my favourites is the baby oyster congee. The plump oysters are practically poached in the rice soup along with chunks of minced pork, Chinese ham and mushroom. We each had seconds of this giant tureen.

Another interesting Chiu Chow specialty are dumplings where the wrapper is actually made of a very thin fried egg white, and inside the filling is diced chicken, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots, and tied  together by a thin piece of chive topped with shrimp roe. This is such an interesting dish especially in terms of execution; interestingly it tastes of butter, and the bamboo shoots inside are a nice textural highlight.

Dumpling wrappers made of fried egg white are impressive

We were almost full -- but not before we tried some desserts. First up was wok-fried taro covered in sugar -- this is very difficult to execute, as the taro needs to be constantly moving in the hot wok otherwise the sugar on top will burn. Here the slices of taro were practically white with some scallion bits.

Another was a soup of green beans with some translucent jelly cubes. Not a favourite, but a fantastic finish was a taro pudding, again constantly stirred in the wok which is challenging because the grounded taro is so sticky. The end result is a very smooth and sweet hot pudding that's practically screaming to be called comfort food. The small bowl looks deceiving, but really one or two spoonfuls are all you need to satisfy your sweet tooth.

In the end our bill came to just under HK$1,000 for four. We will surely be back again as my uncle already began thinking about what to order next time...

Stir-fried slices of taro covered in sugar is difficult to make

Lok Hau Fook
1-3 Hau Wong Road
Kowloon City
2382 7408

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!

The Tireless Lion Rock Spirit

There are hundreds of people in Sha Tin chanting for Sun Hung Kai to explain

Tensions are still simmering in New Town Plaza in Sha Tin tonight, the site of the pitched battles between protesters and the police. This evening there are crowds of people gathered in the same spot shouting, "Sun Hung Kai explain!"

They rightly or wrongly believe the developer that owns the mall may have called the police in on Sunday evening, which created a lot of chaos and violence. The mall has reiterated twice in written statements that it did not call the police to come in.

Nevertheless, residents are demanding answers and apparently will continue chanting this message everyday until they get one.

This booth and several others will be inundated by protesters

People are very angry, tired and frustrated. But most of all they want to be listened to and Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor is completely ignoring them after she claimed she would work harder to engage the community.

In the meantime there are so many activities going on -- I had to ask a colleague what was happening and this person gave me a long verbal list of what was happening where. It's pretty amazing.

Tomorrow should be interesting -- it is the start of the Hong Kong Book Fair -- known for its massive lines because parents want to snap up books for their children to read during their summer break.

However, protesters will be targeting booths run by a mainland publisher, Sino United Publishing. It is state-owned and is controlled by Beijing's liaison office in Hong Kong, and is the largest publishing group in the city that controls as much as 90 percent of the book retail business through its subsidiaries, Joint Publishing, Chung Hwa Book and Commercial Press.

Will a Lennon Wall be started at the Hong Kong Book Fair?

Some tactics that protesters discussed online include setting up a "Lennon Wall", which are a collage of messages written by people that have sprouted all over the city; besieging booths by standing there and reading, and protest talks given by pro-Beijing writers.

And surprise surprise -- Hong Kong's leader won't be attending the opening of the event -- the first time in three years.

Meanwhile there will be more events this week, including tomorrow when seniors who will be marching from Chater Garden in Central to government headquarters in Admiralty, and on Sunday, Civil Rights Front will have a rally in Admiralty calling for an independent inquiry on police actions during protests.

This coming weekend there will also be marches held in Hung Hom, Western and Tseung Kwan O.

Summer this year has hardly been quiet. It's a pretty schizophrenic situation -- there are violent clashes on the weekends, but come Monday morning everything is civilized again until Friday evening. If anything this Hong Kong spirit is indefatigable!