Dim sum or hot pot?

Discovering Hong Kong culinary world is a journey in and of itself. Cantonese cuisine is known for the freshness of ingredients and cooking methods that are meant to bring out their flavour best: steaming and stir-frying. One of the specialties of Cantonese flavouring is dried or preserved ingredients like dried scallops, small shrimp or fish, salted duck egg, fermented tofu and black beans, etc. Herbs tend to be limited to garlic, coriander leaves and spring onions, while spices hardly ever go beyond ginger and white pepper.

Your eating experience can be enhanced if you share it with Hong Kongers: the Western menu is thrown out the window and the true local experience comes in. To fully enjoy it, one does have to stay very open-minded, though. Westerners may have a hard time adjusting to fully accept some local food like organ meats or chicken feet. A special place in local cuisine belongs to roast or barbeque meat: duck, goose, chicken, pork. Cantonese cuisine also offers some of the best fresh seafood: most seafood restaurants would keep water tanks with live fish, crabs, clams, prawns and other sea creatures.

Eating traditions are also very peculiar. It is very uncommon to order a dish for oneself; that only happens in restaurants catering western cuisines. In the Chinese dining etiquette, food is meant to be shared. Orders are normally made for several dishes, which are placed on an elevated rotating board in the centre of the table, so that everyone could easily reach out to every dish. One of the traditional ways to serve food is dim sum – small portions served in steaming baskets or on small plates. Famous “hot pot” is also based on idea of sharing where all diners will dip fresh meat and vegetables into the boiling broth to cook.