Hong Kong: Hakka Cuisine

So I am kind of obsessed with the Hakka people, I love their architecture and would very much like to visit the Tulou in mainland China, Fujian Province. I now know that I am also totally obsessed with Hakka cuisine. This restaurant had no english signs, was hidden in a mall so well that we accidentally set off a fire alarm while trying to locate the place. It was well worth our efforts, however, and currently reigns as our top restaurant in Hong Kong. There are more images of each dish on my flickr.

Best Pork Belly Ever

Salt Baked Chicken

Black Pepper Beef Short Rib

Minced Pork Stuffed Tofu

Pork Belly so tender that my chopstick sunk right through

Tofu is not just for vegetarians, meat makes tofu go from great to fantastic

Close up of the most tender and flavorful short rib ever

Sweet Adzuki Bean Soup Dessert

The Hakka people live inland and specialize in pork and water fowl. Many of their dishes emphasize the communal nature of their living conditions and, as such, are dishes that must be shared with a huge group or ordered a day in advance. We made due with these classic Hakka dishes which could be ordered on the spot. I want to have an authentic Hakka feast at some point in my life. Someday. You are all invited.

Hong Kong: Cheap Food and Nature Walks

I am going to try to step a bit more into the role of food blogger. There is an overwhelming amount of food going into my body (and camera.) I have so much to relate now! The pictures mostly speak for themselves. This price range and food range is where it is at, unpretentious, delicious, real people food. People in Hong Kong don't generally have enough room at home to cook for themselves or their family. Most people eat out for every meal. Our first meal of the day cost us $27 hkd, roughly $3 usd. We ordered it by me pointing at what some local was eating (pigs feet and flat rice noodles) and So-Han being able to figure out the characters for "noodle," "shrimp" and "wonton" on the all-Cantonese menu.

Shrimp Wonton Noodle Soup

Delicious Shrimp Wonton

Pig's Feet and Flat Rice Noodles

Bones from the Pig's Feet

Pigs feet are difficult to eat, I splashed myself with soup pretty extensively. I caught the eye of the waitress and grinned, she tried to hide her amusement but relaxed and laughed with me when she saw that I had a sense of humor. If I can make at least one stranger smile then the day has been a success. Pigs feet are very bony, much like chicken feet... Really all feet are very full of small bones. I had much more success breaking up the first foot, all of the bones of this foot made it into the small bone bowl. The second foot put up more of a fight and I had to leave it with some of its delicious bounty of cartilage, collagen and fat.

Having finished our well-rounded breakfast, we set out on our hike. Around the next corner we found a fruit market and after showing interest in a type of fruit that we could not identify, were man-handled into purchasing a bag full of them for $24 hkd, $3 usd.

This fruit is phenomenal and tastes slightly like a persimmon. If anybody knows what it is please let me know. We ate the entire bag during our hike, with the exception of those few we left as an offering at a Temple along the way.

Here are a few other photos, a sample of what you can find on my flickr page if you are really interested about the entire adventure.

It's not like we need an excuse to eat, but after this hike we were ready for lunch! We went to what we referred to as the BBQ place next door to our first meal (from day one, the land and sea noodle bowls.) Again, this meal cost us $62 hkd, or just under $8 usd. The increase in price from breakfast is due to: being closer to the nearby shopping district of Causeway Bay (where we are staying), the change from communal tables to individual tables, the staff being able to speak English and the change from hot water to hot tea as the drink served with the meal. I ordered Beef Stomach with Rice Noodles and So-Han got Roast Goose and Roast Pork with Rice.

Beef Stomach with Rice Noodles

Roast Goose

Roast Pork

Delicious Simmering Wok of Organ Meat

This was yet another phenomenal meal. Delicious organ meat is the surest way to warm my heart, and I have a very broad definition of delicious. That brings us up to now, I am going to go back and blog for the last couple of days at some point. So-Han and I are firmly convinced that Hong Kong is the best food city in the world. To prove this I am totally prepared to eat my way through every city in the world. Look at me, so willing to selflessly devote myself to such a great and noble cause.

Korean Food in Times Square Hong Kong

Traditional Korean Ban Chan

Ban Chan are an essential element to Korean cuisine, and one of my favorites! The diversity of dishes which come out in this fashion is phenomenal. Ban Chan are traditionally plates of preserved meats and vegetables. They are meant to be eaten on their own, or added to other dishes on the table. This second feature is something that features largely into one of the most popular forms of eating Korean food, the Korean Barbeque. If you notice under the Ban Chan dishes there is a grate, this disk can be removed from the table to reveal a stove top which diners can use to cook different types of meat, fish and veggies. This restaurant brought out two dishes of Ban Chan per diner and, as we looked around the restaurant, it seemed that all the other tables had at least the same selection as we did if not more plates to match the fact that they had more diners. We tried to see if they would bring out more plates if we finished all of ours, but they said it would cost more and we had already ordered to match our Texas-sized stomachs.

Mackerel and Kimchee

Beef and Buckwheat Noodles

Ox Tail

Dessert

Hong Kong!

I am trying to figure out why it took me twenty-one years to get to Hong Kong.

This city is amazing.

I have loved essentially every moment since my last post, every facet of Hong Kong is interesting, fun, delicious and beautiful. I have seen almost no homeless people nor beggars, public transportation is convenient, logical, on time, clean and there are no hecklers nor solicitors. 90% of my time since arriving has involved food, tea or communing with nature. Clothes are cheap and shopping is everywhere.

As I got to Hong Kong after 48 hours of travel only to find out that my bag wouldn't be arriving in HK until the following day, I decided that I would need to get some clothes rather than stretch my outfit out to the 72-96 hour mark. I spent the equivalent of 40 us dollars for designer slacks and a button up. Deals like this and better are everywhere! I seem to have arrived in the midst of one of the larger yearly sale periods. Shopping is not why I came to Hong Kong, but it would be a good reason to come!

Closer to my heart... food!! I managed to find the time to post a few pictures last night. So-han and I sat down in a noodle house for lunch right after meeting up. We ordered two bowls filled with the things wewere most excited about, one bowl of sea and one of land. The sea bowl(below) included: Squid, Cuddlefish Ball, Fish Cake, Octopus Roll with Rice Vermicelli while the land bowl (left) featured Ox Lung, Tendon, Tripe and Pork Intestine with Rice Vermicelli! Both were phenomenal and each bowl cost about 4 usd ~ 28 hkd.

We spent the whole day between lunch and dinner in the Longrun Pu-Erh teahouse sampling teas and speaking with the staff there. Longrun tea is the first tea company to be

traded, they can do this since they are based out of Hong Kong, were they based out of China proper, they wouldn't be able to go public. We tried four different teas while there: two shou pu-erh, one sheng pu-erh and

one black tea. We left there having bought a beeng cha (below, right) and were given a second tea cake as part of their celebrating having a stock

number. (they named a line of their pu-erh 2898, their stock number being HKG:2898.) We have been enjoying the 2898 brick since(below, left)

For dinner we found a restaurant called "Under Bridge Spicy Crab." There was a line out the door which we took to be a good sign (correctly.) We found out later that a chef from this restaurant was featured on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations: Hong Kong.

We ordered Mantis Shrimp, a Sausage dish and the famous Spicy Crab!The shrimp and crab were delicious. Mantis shrimp are extremely tender despite their massive size! We ordered the spiciest level of crab on the menu and we were definitely delighted to find the dish a challenge to complete. The spice level was significant enough that my lips swelled up and we both had the distinct impression that the spice had worked it's way up through our skulls and into the back of our eyes.

was made all the more dire due to the fact that we were mostly using our hands in order to get the meat out of the crab and that

I have yet to find a satisfactory napkin in Hong Kong, double ply tissues are essentially as heavy duty as napkins get here and I promise you that those napkins to nothing to get greasy pepper seeds and seasonings off of your hands.

We were not bested however, putting down all the food which we were served. We called it an early night because we each needed some time to sit and recover from the meal, a feat accomplished with the aid of some of the 2898 brick.

Unfortunately, the 2898 brick also succeeded in caffeinating me so sufficiently that old mr. sandman left me wanting for his love and affection until the wee hours of the morning.

We woke up and went to go get some Dim Sum with two Japanese women we met at the Under Bridge Spicy Crab. Dim Sum is one of the coolest and least friendly to gluten-free people culinary traditions in the world.

I took many many photos of this meal, all of which I will post to flickr soon (the internet connection here is frustratingly slow) All of the dishes were delicious, I decided to try many of the dishes which I thought (read: knew) that I couldn't eat and, oddly, my body

delayed in its response until very late in the day (luckily since we spent most of the day far from restrooms.)

Chicken feet(up, right) are delicious and were certainly a highlight, right up there with the dish featuring the best tripe I've tasted in my life (bottom left).

After lunch we took a tram to the Tin Hau temple stop and then embarked on a four hour journey to find the Tin Hau temple which was located five minutes from the stop. This

journey took us way up one of the mountains in the center of the island and into the Tai Tam County Park (Quarry Bay Extension.)

There exist many well maintained trails and steps leading up into this mountainous rain-forest, however we somehow managed to take a wrong fork at some point and we found ourselves on a long long overgrown path

which disappeared and reappeared as we climbed and blazed paths around copious amounts of trash, trees and elephant-ear leaves. When we finally crested the last bowl of overgrown masonry, tires and other bits of miscellaneous origins and dates, we found ourselves facing a no-trespassing sign on this side of an apartment complex green space / garden.

Our only option had us hugging the fence, still maintaing our general origin of inwards and upwards. Our efforts were rewarded when we rejoined a paved street at the intersection of the chain-link fence and a well maintained walk path coming up from the general direction we had been trailblazing our way through for the past hour or so.

Robert Frost would be proud. Unable to see any way to continue up the mountains, we started walking down the street we had just met up with. Luckily, within a minute we found a path leading upwards and inwards towards what we were soon to learn was the Tai Tam Country Park. There were city employees sweeping the entrance to the path and So-Han asked one of the old men, in Cantonese, "where does this path lead", he responded in Cantonese before turning to me and saying "it leads to walking."

When old Chinese people speak broken English it sounds a lot more profound than when people of any other culture speak broken English. We still didn't actually know where the trail was leading us, but we were fine with being led to walking. Any amount of walking on well maintained trails is possible after a prolonged period spent fighting your way through plants, washed away bits of stone and concrete and climbing up inclines using trees, vines and long unloved slabs of concrete which broke through the rainforest in places fewer and more far between the further from the fork we got. We finally started our walk back down into the city after we spent a few minutes sitting at

a little pagoda structure besides a mountain stream in the midst of the park, near the center of Hong Kong Island. I didn't realize we were still looking for the temple, but So-Han wouldn't be bested by the city, so we finally made our way back to where we started the journey and almost immediately found the temple. Life is a journey, if I can't take the time to enjoy the path I take to get myself to my destinations then I will truly miss out on so much beauty (side note: I re-watched American Beauty while on the plane to Asia, I love every time I re-visit a piece of fiction and am rewarded for doing so by being able to draw new lessons and new insight from the media.

time I reach a wall in my general faith, patience, goodwill or tolerance, some force presents itself to console me and remind me of the beauty of it all. I am truly blessed.) The temple was very cool (picture right), the people that worked there didn't seem particularly fond to have me visit but I would probably start to feel the same way as them were my place of work and worship also a tourist destination. From the temple we went back to the hotel, found that my bag had arrived from the airline and I fell asleep for a good four hour or so nap while So-Han uploaded some of his videos and updated his blog.

(Edit: this meal can be viewed here)
Dinner consisted of Frog, Abalone and a white fish and pork dish. I left the hotel in a post-nap stupor and failed to remember to take my camera. Instead of using a photo to try to show you how the abalone tasted, I will use words to describe how it looked. The abalone was a particularly photogenic plane, four pieces each still in their half-shell (abalone shells are amazing, they have a phenomenal gleam to them which seems to reflect every color of the rainbow) and were plated with either the thinnest clearest vermicelli I have ever seen or with bean-thread noodles in a thin light brown sauce. All the dishes were delicious, as was the sweet soup dessert which was an adzuki bean and ginko treat. I am in love with adzuki beans. There is a massive glass mason jar full of them above my sink. They are the second most consumed bean in Asia, following the soybean.

My stomach decided it was tired of me letting my tongue and eyes lead and it reminded me of who was boss right after dinner.

Well, I'm not sure what is in store for tomorrow but I will be in touch, Keep a lookout for photos, I am adding photos more frequently than I am blogging because it generally takes a lot less time and creativity.

Thank you all for sharing in my adventures online! By donating your time and attention you are giving me a gift far more valuable than anything temporal. Community is true wealth. So sayeth It's a Wonderful Life.

The Joys of Travel

I have been in airports for over 24 hours now and I have at least another 14-15 hours to go before I will be in Hong Kong.

I got to the Copenhagen airport at about 11 am, hoping to move from the 5:50 flight to London to the 1:30 flight as I had heard that a snow storm would be coming in and I feared that the later flight might be delayed or canceled. The earlier flight was full however, so I had arrived at the airport seven hours early in vain. This became even more apparent as the weather proved my fears well-founded and the time slipped past 5:50, past 6:15, past 6:30 without any flight information what-so-ever. Around this time I gave up on my gate and walked back towards the hub of the airport to figure out what was going on. I found the entire Departures board to be lit up in "Awaiting Info" and "Canceled," and then I found myself, along with every other passenger, diverted into the "transfer center." I took the number K321, looked at the board to see K215 buried amongst the other numbers from groups A, B and C. I spent until roughly 8:45 dealing with lines and bureaucracy until I was told to run to gate C26 to board BA flight 821 to London. I made it to London, was handed a hotel voucher, a convenient little baggie full of amenities, and the news that my bag should reach me in Hong Kong. European Airlines are less accommodating with the size of carry ons, many of them limit you to a single bag, not a personal item and bag, so my plan of not checking any luggage met an untimely end.

I feel like travel drama is probably more of me just venting than something that anybody else really cares about, but then again I have always been really bad at figuring out whether or not other people will enjoy something and I think that this blog post is part of a life philosophy which says do and talk about the things you know and are interested in rather than things which you think you can say that other people might like.

Well anyways, I am going to return to travel-zombie mode and continue waiting in the Cathay-Pacific lounge. Hopefully the next you all hear from me I will be eating delicious food in Hong Kong. I would rather be talking/thinking about food than airports.

I am totally in love with Copenhagen

Copenhagen is awesome.

The city is amazingly beautiful. The people are beautiful, extremely nice and speak English perfectly. We are planning on eating Danish food today, but the ethnic food we have eaten has been amazing. The major (and essentially the only) minority group in Denmark is Asiatic, ranging from India to China. There are also some really good Middle Eastern restaurants along the major shopping street, the Strøget. We don't really plan on loving Danish cuisine, it is mostly big slabs of meat, fish, preserved fish and other preserved goods. It makes sense given where we are in the world, but it seems particularly boring. I am excited to try some fish and pickled fish... because fish are delicious.

Denmark is a very interesting country and is an outlier on many different indices, standing out as one of the happiest countries while having some of the highest taxes and most extreme levels of social welfare. There is a flat sales tax of 25% and the range of income tax is roughly 45-70%. Life in Denmark is not cheap as a result of the sales tax, we have been spending at least 20 dollars on most of our meals. Taxes like this would be a hugely contentious issue in the bipartisan politics of the US but here all of the many (7+) political parties are largely in support of social welfare economics. As somebody who generally opposes all forms of government, I find myself very convinced that the systems which are in place here, work here. Don't look to me for support in copying these politics in the US. Government isn't simply theory, and governments can't be copy-pasted. Denmark is much smaller, more homogenous, uniformly educated, has a growth rate that is exactly the same as their death rate, everybody (literally everybody) who we have met speaks at least three languages, perfectly. Social welfare works when your entire country is essentially playing for the A team is the big lesson Denmark has taught me. Even when we eat in asian food restaurants, the ethnic minorities speak to one another in their native languages, to the Danes in Danish and to us in English (and not the broken english we are used to when dining in authentic ethnic food restaurants in the US.) I have been here for a couple days and I can would totally be willing to live here. It has been cold, but not too cold. We saw it snow, almost got run over by a snow plow tractor who unexpectedly reversed. I have been wearing many layers (because a side-trip to scandinavia during a trip to the 70 degree and rainy part of Asia while not checking any bags is not the best logistic packing maneuver) and this has been comfortable and warm. The only part of my body consistently getting cold is my toes, and this is because Vans slip-ons do not make very good snow boots. Big surprise.

Today is our last full day in Copenhagen, I will fly to Hong Kong tomorrow and will arrive there the day after that. My travel day will start at 5:00 pm and I will arrive in Hong Kong at 4:00 pm the next day. Crazy. But now Brian is awake and it sounds like he just finished his shower, so I am off to shower and prepare myself to seize this, my last day in Scandinavia in the foreseeable future... But I promise you (speaking to the second person in a blog feels weird) that I will be back to Denmark.

-Max