Hong Kong cuisine

Hong Kong cuisineis mainly influenced byCantonese cuisine,European cuisines(especiallyBritish cuisine) and non-Cantonese Chinese cuisines (especiallyHakka,Teochew,HokkienandShanghainese), as well asJapanese,KoreanandSoutheast Asiancuisines, due to Hong Kong's past as aBritishcolonyand a long history of being an international port of commerce. Complex combinations and internationalgourmetexpertise have given Hong Kong the labels of "Gourmet Paradise" and "World's Fair of Food".
Modern Hong Kong has a predominantly service-based economy,and restaurant businesses serve as a main economic contributor. With the fourth-densest population per square metre in the world and serving a population of 7 million,Hong Kong is host to a restaurant industry with intense competition. Due to its small geographical size, Hong Kong contains a high number of restaurants per unit area.
With Cantonese ethnicity making up 94% of the resident population,Cantonese cuisineis naturally served at home. A majority of Chinese in Hong Kong areCantonesein addition to sizable numbers ofHakka,TeochewandShanghainesepeoples, and home dishes areCantonesewith occasional mixes of the other three types of cuisines.Riceis predominantly the mainstaplefor home meals. Home ingredients are picked up from localgrocery storesand independent produce shops, althoughsupermarketshave become progressively more popular.
Hong Kong homes and kitchens tend to be small due to a high population density, and traditional Chinese cuisine often requires the freshest possible ingredients, so food shopping is undertaken frequently and in smaller quantities than is now usual in the West.Take-outand dining out is also very common, since people are often too busy to cook with an average 47-hour work week.
The cuisine of Hong Kong traces its origins to its founding as aBritish colonial outpostin 1841. Soon after the colony was founded, manyWesternmerchantsalong with Chinese emigrants from nearbyCantonflocked there to conduct business. Initially, Hong Kong society consisted ofexpatriateupper-classWesterners,working-classChinesecoolies,farmersandfishermen, andmiddle classChinese merchants. The simplepeasantcuisine was rudimentary compared to the cuisine of 19th century Canton (now commonly known as Guangzhou).
As the colony developed, there arose a need for meals to entertain businessmen. Some Chinese restaurants were founded in the late 19th century and early 20th century as branches of renowned restaurants in Canton and offered elaborate meals consisting of traditional Chinese "eight main courses and eight entrees" (八大八小) types ofbanquetsfor 2taelsof silver, at the time equal to a clerk's monthly wage.Before 1935 whenprostitutionwas still legal in Hong Kong, femaleescortsoften accompanied diners to restaurant meals, especially those of a business entertainment nature.Until theSecond World War,opiumwas also offered. For the majority of Chinese who were not part of the merchant class, dining out in restaurants was non-existent and consisted of simple Cantonese country fares. Meat only appeared in festive occasions and celebrations such as birthdays were often done by catering services who prepared the meals at the celebrant's home. The restaurant scene for Europeans in Hong Kong remained separate from Chinese dining. Elaborate Western-style restaurants existed at the likes ofHongkong Hoteland subsequentlyGloucester Hotel.
Hong Kong's dining lagged behind the then-leader of Chinese cuisine,Canton, for a long time and many Hong Kong chefs spent their formative years in Canton. Canton was renowned for its food, and there was a traditional saying of "The food is in Canton" (食在廣州).Cantonese cuisine in Canton reached its peak during the 1920s and was renowned in the care in preparation even for peasant fares such asChar siuorboat congee.Dasanyuan[zh]was renowned for its braisedshark findish that charged 60 silver yuan, equivalent to 6 months' wage for aworking-classfamily.The Guandong cooking style eventually trickled down to the culinary scene in Hong Kong.
The victory ofChinese Communistsin theChinese Civil Warin 1949 created a wave ofrefugeesinto Hong Kong. A sizeable number of refugees were from non-Cantonese speaking parts of China, including theYangtze River Delta, and introducedShanghai cuisineto Hong Kong. On the other hand, most renowned chefs of Canton, now known asGuangzhouin pinyin romanisation, settled in Hong Kong to escape from Communist rule inmainland China.
Prostitution and opium had by then long faded from the restaurant scene, and to survive, many restaurants started to tap into profitable new markets by offeringyum chaand wedding banquets, which coincided with an increasing interest in Western fare by the Chinese in Hong Kong.
Egg tartsandHong Kong-style milk teasoon became part of Hong Kong's food culture. It could be argued that the seeds of Hong Kong society as understood today were not sown until 1949, and the cuisine of Hong Kong has its direct roots in this period.
By the 1960s, Hong Kong was past the worst of the economic depression, and there was a long and continuous period of relative calm and openness compared to the Communist rule inMao Zedong-era China and martial law isolation in Taiwan. The Cantonese cuisine in Hong Kong had by then surpassed that of Guangzhou, which had witnessed a long period of decline after the Communists came to power. The rising prosperity from the mid-1960s had given birth to increasing demand for quality dining. Many of the chefs, who spent their formative years in pre-Communist Guangzhou and Shanghai, started to bring out the best of fine dining specialties from pre-1949 Guangzhou andShanghai. Families had largely abandoned catering services and resorted to restaurants for celebratory meals.Seafood started to become specialised delicacies in the 1960s, followed bygamein the 1970s.
This wave of prosperity also propelled Hong Kong Chinese's awareness of foreign food trends, and many were willing to try foreign ingredients such asasparagusandcrayfishfromAustralia. Foreign food styles such asJapaneseandSoutheast Asian cuisinestarted to influence local food, and the pace of change accelerated during the late 1970s and early 1980s. This gave birth to nouvelle Cantonese cuisine (Chinese:新派粵菜;Cantonese Yale:Sānpaai Yuhtchoi) that incorporated foreign dishes such assashimiinto Cantonese banquets.For the first time, many Hong Kong Chinese started to have the economic means to visit many Western restaurants of the domain of mainly wealthyexpatriateWesterners such asGaddi'sof thePeninsula Hotel. During these years, there was great wealth growth from stock market investments, and one visible manifestation of the resultantnouveau richementality in 1970s Hong Kong were sayings such as "mixingshark fin soupwith rice" (Chinese:魚翅撈飯;Cantonese Yale:Yùhchi Lōufaahn).
China initiatedeconomic reformswhenDeng Xiaopingcame to power afterMao Zedongdied. The opening up of the country gave chefs from Hong Kong chances to reestablish links with chefs from mainland China severed in 1949 and opportunities to gain awareness of various regional Chinese cuisines. Many of these cuisines also contributed to nouvelle Cantonese cuisines in Hong Kong.The lift ofmartial law in Taiwanin 1987 jump-started Taiwanese links with mainland China and has caused a proliferation of eateries specialising inTaiwanese cuisinein Hong Kong as Taiwanese tourists and businessmen used Hong Kong as a midpoint for visits to mainland China. From 1978 until 1997 there was no dispute Hong Kong was the epicenter of Chinese, not only Cantonese, cuisine worldwide, with Chinese restaurants in mainland China and Taiwan, and among overseas Chinese communities, racing to employ chefs trained or worked in Hong Kong and emulating dishes improved upon or invented in Hong Kong. Hong Kong–style Cantonese cuisine (Cantonese Yale:Góngsīk Yuhtchoi) became a coinword for innovative Chinese cuisine during this period.It was even unofficially rumoured the Chinese government had secretly consulted the head chef for thePeking Garden Restaurant[zh]of Hong Kong, part of theMaxim's restaurant and cateringconglomerate, to teach chefs back at the renownedQuanjuderestaurant in Beijing how to make goodPeking duck, Quanjude's signature dish, in the early 1980s as the skills to produce the dish were largely lost during theCultural Revolution.
After Hong Kong wasreturned to Chinain 1997, theAsian financial crisisandSARS epidemicled to a decade-long depression. The boom in Hong Kong culinary scene came to a halt and many restaurants were shuttered, including a number of renowned eateries such asSun Tung Lok. It is argued that the catch up in prosperity among populations from coastal regions of China, particularly the nouveau riche (derogatory Chinese:daai foon大款) and corrupted officials (derogatory Chinese:daai ye大爺), has driven up the demand of many delicacies such asabaloneandgrouper, and many celebratory dishes have become outrageously expensive that they are beyond the reach of even many upper-middle class Hong Kong families.At the same time, Hong Kong people's tastes have become cosmopolitan when compared with one generation ago. Many are now able to appreciate specificEuropeancuisines rather than one generic "Western cuisine", and appreciation of other Asian cuisines, especiallyJapanese cuisineandThai cuisinehas been ever increasing.These have produced a proliferation of many specialist ethnic cuisine restaurants geared towards young middle class couples on one hand, and a consolidation of fine-dining Cantonese restaurants on the other.
As of the early 21st century Hong Kong, notwithstanding the partial recovery of Hong Kong's economy from the slump in 2003 due to the SARS epidemic, many pundits argue that contemporary Hong Kong's economy is heavily skewed towardsreal estate developmentandfinancial services. This provides prosperity to only a select few minority and an uncertain long-term economic fortune vis-a-vis more diversified mega-rich cities in China such as Shanghai andGuangzhou, and the territory therefore no longer possesses the economic base to support mass-level super fine-dining that is required to sustain an active dining culture. A common perception of Hong Kong's current culinary culture is one being in decline and resting on past laurels. For example, culinary magazines such asEat and Travel Weeklyreport fewer fundamentally new dishes being invented in Hong Kong post-2000 than the 1980s heyday, and many restaurants tend to resort to popularise haute dishes invented in the 1980s.Modern Hong Kong's labour market has also disrupted the traditional ways of grooming Chinese chefs, which henceforth been trained in a very long and drawn one-to-one practical apprenticeships. Very few chefs are willing to sacrifice their time and effort to produce traditional cooking that discourages cutting corners, and emphasises techniques over ingredients' net economic worth.On the other hand, a minority of optimistic pundits argue Hong Kong may well develop a foodie culture similar to other developed economies and preserve the best of traditional cooking.
Historically, Hong Kong's food source came from a combination of mini stores instead of supermarkets. Some of the stores included:rice dealers(Chinese:米舖;Cantonese Yale:Máihpou), serving as mini rice storage warehouses;wine shops(Chinese:辦館;Cantonese Yale:Baahn gún), which offered beverages;convenient stores(Chinese:士多;Cantonese Yale:Sidō, Cantonese rendering of "store"), which were single convenient stores, most notable for serving fresh baked bread. The main component waswet markets(Chinese:街市;Cantonese Yale:Gāaisíh) – one of the first market gatherings in Hong Kong wasCentral Marketthat began in the 1840s.
The idea of a single facility or supermarket that provided all food ingredients did not take place until the early1970swhenWellcome, a local grocery chain, changed its format into a supermarket. Air-conditioned supermarkets did not become standardised until the 1980s. The early 21st century Western environmentalism- orsustainability-inspired food trends, such asnatural food,organic food,non-genetically modified food,local food, andfarmer's markets, have been ignored by a majority of Hong Kong's populations. The Westernfarmer's marketshare some similarities with the traditional Chinesewet markets, however support of wet markets is largely based on traditional Chinese cultural preference rather than sustainability, and wet markets contain many features that are condemned by modern Western environmentalists on the grounds of "animal cruelty" (live animals sold for food) and "high food miles" (fruits and seafood from another continent).
Most restaurant serving sizes are considerably small by international standards, especially in comparison to most Western nations like theUnited StatesandCanada. Themain courseis usually accompanied by a generous portion of carbohydrates such as rice ormein(noodles). People generally eat 5 times a day.
Similar to Cantonese cuisine elsewhere, Hong Kong's cooking uses a wide variety of ingredients and the common ones include:
These are basically streetside food stalls, operated by usually one or two people pushing a cart. The carts are usually very mobile, allowing the businesses freedom to sell snacks in whichever area is most populated at a particular point in time. While they have been popular in the 1970s and 1980s, tight health regulations and other forms ofleaseversuslicensedhawker restrictions have put a burden on this mobile food culture.The termJau Gweibecame associated with the hawkers trying to avoid restrictions.
Examples include:
As the most predominant cultural group in Hong Kong, Cantonese food forms the backbone of home cooking and dine-out scenes. Many early celebrated Cantonese restaurants, includingTai San Yuan,Luk Yu Tea House, were originally Hong Kong branches of the famed Guangzhou-based restaurants, and most chefs in Hong Kong until the 1970s had spent their formative years working in the restaurant industry inGuangzhou.Most of the celebrated dishes in Hong Kong were introduced into the territory through Guangzhou, often refined with awareness of international tastes. Cantonese food prices perhaps cover the widest range, from small businesses’lou meito the most expensiveabalonedelicacies.
One well-developed dish in Cantonese cuisine isdim sum. Waiters cart around stacks of steamer baskets or small plates of food for customers to choose. Dim sum includes dishes based on meat, seafood, vegetables, as well as desserts and fruit. The termyum cha(lit.'drink tea') is synonymous with eating dim sum for Hong Kong people. It is customary for families to eat dim sum on weekends. Most foods are steamed, traditionally.
Examples include:
This hot pot cuisine, known asdaa bin lou(Chinese:打邊爐;Jyutping:daabinlou;pinyin:dǎbiānlú) inCantonese, is unique in the sense that everyone is a chef. A boiling pot of water (soup-based, and customers can choose their preferred soup taste), is placed in the center of the table, and essentially everyone boils their own ingredients in that pot. This is highly popular and is usually accompanied with a bottle of cold beer or soda. This style is common during frigid winter times, since people are essentially huddled around a fire. This format is also considered entertaining.
Examples include:
Non-alcoholic beveragesare particularly associated withcha chaan teng, a unique kind of restaurant in Hong Kong. Since drink recipes are not franchise-based, most drinks can vary depending on the restaurant.Rock sugarandsyrupare commonly used to add sweetness.
Some beverages that originated inthe tea cultureof Taiwan, such asbubble teaandhoney green tea, had been brought to Hong Kong and become part of Hong Kong's beverage culture.
Examples include:
A large wide variety of tea leaves and combinations are used for Chinese tea. In the 1950s and 1960s, citizens would go to tea houses accompanied by their pet birds locked in a bird cage.Noon teawas an essential break in the middle of the day. Tea nowadays goes along with any meal.
Examples include:
Dishes derived from cuisines of the Western world, but not classified into a particular country, belong in this category. It is known in Hong Kong assai chaan(西餐, 'Western cuisine'), and outside of Hong Kong asHong Kong-style Western cuisineorCanto-Western cuisine. Restaurants that offer this style of cuisine are usuallycha chaan teng(茶餐廳, Hong Kong-style diners) at the popular end, andsai chaanteng(西餐廳, 'Western restaurants') at the more upscale range. Restaurants that have come to expect tourists will likely offer both east and west menus. Most dishes are localised with Chinese tastesand contain Chinese and specifically Cantonese influences, such as steak marinated insoy sauce, served in agravydominated by soy sauce, and withfried riceor pasta on the side.
Examples include: