Took a little trip to Hong Kong this past weekend, it was amazing. I love HK – the shopping, the people, the FOOD! Although my family is not from HK, I felt a real affinity with the city, and I think it’s definitely a place I’d like to live in someday.
Everyone says its impossible to get bad food in Hong Kong, and I think this is true. Everywhere you go, amazing eats! Plus, Hong Kong is the home of the cha chaan teng, or Chinese tea house. These restaurants are everywhere, and serve an inexpensive, eclectic menu that mixes the East (stir fried noodles) with the West (baked macaroni casserole.)
One of my favorite cha chaan teng dishes is beef tendon noodle soup (ngo gun ho fun). I go crazy for this stuff. This dish is the ultimate comfort food for me – my dad and I used to trek to Chinatown on Sundays and dig into a bowl of this at the Washington Bakery & Cafe in SF. This dish is a common and simple one, but a lot of places just can’t get it right. (There is no good beef tendon noodle in NYC!!!) The tendon in this dish should be extremely tender, softened from being braised with ginger and Chinese five spice. The soup should be rich and beefy, the ho fun (wide rice noodles) perfectly cooked with a bit of bite. I like it when they serve this dish up with plenty of iceberg lettuce. Now that’s comfort food.
Once I stepped off the plane, I met up with my girl Gee and we went off in search of food. We stopped by a streetside noodle stall in Kwun Tong, Kowloon, for a bowl of legit HK soup noodles.
This noodle stall sold piping hot bowls of thin egg noodles in broth, and you can choose your topping. I went with wontons, beef brisket, and beef tendon. This was probably the best bowl of beef tendon noodle I’ve ever had. The cuts of brisket were primo, and the tendon was extremely tender and melted in your mouth. Plus the little details – fried shallots, green onions – really made the dish. Wow. I will never forget you, kwun tong noodles!
Next bowl of tendon noodles: the infamous Tsui Wah. We have a branch here in Shanghai, but I finally got to make a pilgrimage to the original in Lan Kwai Fung. This was a pretty damn good bowl of beef tendon noodles. I can’t remember much about it though, it was 4am, what can i say?
I had this bowl of noodles right before I headed back to Shanghai. There was a cha chaan teng in the airport called “Windows.” Eh.. not that great, but still a helluva lot better than what they serve in Shanghai or NYC.
Another favorite cha chaan teng snack of mine:
Most cha chaan teng will offer a set meal – for breakfast at this random place I ordered a yummy sang choy yu pien jook (congee with fish slices & shredded iceberg lettuce) with the ngo yook cherng (beef rice noodle roll). With a drink for $22 HKD.
Here’s an example of some of the weird east meets west dishes they serve at cha chaan teng:
This is a Macaunese dish of fried rice topped with roasted chicken, fried fish, and pineapple. All of it is served in a tin pan and smothered with a creamy Thousand Island dressing, then baked in an oven. Really random, gross, and freaking delicious at the same time.
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Tsui Wah
15-19 Wellington Street
Central, Hong Kong
+852 2525 6338
www.tsuiwahrestaurant.com
Tags: beef tendon noodle soup, cha chaan teng, Hong Kong, kowloon, lan kwai fung, macau baked rice, tsui wah
Tsui Wah Shanghai is a total disservice to the Tsui Wah name. The service is horrible, (say what you will about the rude HK wait staff, at least it’s fast and they know what they’re doing) and the food is about half the quality it is in HK.
Knowin HKers (and myself being a half Hongkie) go to Cha’s Chan Tang on Sinan Lu below Huaihai Lu. Sure, its a bit expensive, but the Beef/Tomato rice is solid and if you add an egg, I’d even upgrade it to strong.
i love cha’s!
tsui wah is nice and easy tho..
Have you tried Xin Wang? (Branches on Huaihai Road 2nd floor infiniti and also on changle lu near maoming)
The other option for HKers seems to be Cafe Lisboa – I frequent the one in the basement of Times Square, but they have ones on Shaanxi Bei Lu near Beijing Lu, and on Wujiang Lu above the Burger King.