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In the Hong Kong Food Podcast:
Hong Kong is one of the best foodie destinations in the world. We delight our tastebuds with everything from down and dirty local cantonese food, to up market French tapas. We wash it back with a healthy serving of wine at the international wine and spirits show.
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Weblinks from Hong Kong Food Podcast
World Nomads Insurance* – Specifically designed for digital nomads, flashpackers, adventure & long term Travellers – Get a 5% Discount with our coupon code: FOOD5
Hong Kong Episode 3 – on Travel Freedom Podcast
Bowrington Food Market – Take the elevator to the top floor to enter the food market.
List of all cooked food markets – From this page you can search for cooked food markets in all districts of hong kong
Alchemy* – French inspired cuisine. Tapas Lunch, Dine In The Dark Dinner
Wine and Spirits Festival* – 10-12 November 2016 (Thur – Sat)
Mr Wong: 10號 Shamchun St, Mong Kok, Hong Kong
Egg Tart Chain – Tai Cheong Bakeries
OZO Wesley Hong Kong* – our favourite hotel chain in Asia
The Mahjong*- design hostel. Queen Bed dorm / capsule style
Chris Patten – Last British Governor of Hong Kong
Best of 2015 article (Best food at Alchemy)
Fun things to do in Hong Kong – Our most recent HKG article
Pressed Duck – probably a better explanation than the one we gave 😉
Photos
OZO Wesley Hong Kong Rooms
The Mahjong Design Boutique Hostel Hong Kong
Hong Kong Egg Tarts – Eat Them ALL!!!!
Aqua Luna Harbour cruise Hong Kong. Chinese junk boat
Alchemy concept resaurant Hong Kong – Decor
Food photos etc:
Honey pork goose Hong Kong
Alchemy Concept Restaurant – Calamari
Alchemy Concept Restaurant – Venison carpaccio with shaved truffles and truffle oil
The famous Mr Wong’s
Hong Kong Food and Wine Fair – Mollydooker wine
Love this podcast? Why not pin it on your favourite foodie Pinterest board?
Partial Transcript
The following text is based on what is said in the episode. However, it is not a complete version and misses a lot of the content. We recommend listening to get the full experience!
In this episode… Cantonese food right from the source. We are back in Hong Kong. From the down and dirty cooked food markets all the way up to premium french tapas – Hong Kong is the a foodies’ paradise.
So, get ready for a food filled Hong Kong Podcast Extravaganza. I hope you’re Hungry!
We had to go back to Hong Kong because it’s one of our favourite cities in the world!
It’s such a melting pot of cuisine, and we love food, so this was going to work out very well for us!
Of course, we did also take a a harbour tour and get some comfortable sleep with a couple of hotel brands we were working with – as well as catch up with our Friend Chris Poon, who we interviewed for our last Hong Kong podcast all the way back in episode 3! He took us to the semi secret and rather quirky “Mr Wong’s Restaurant and alleged money laundering service” – definitely alleged. Just saying. Don’t want to be chased down by the triads or something. There is no evidence, it’s just comical conjecture.
if you want to hear more from Chris about some of his favourite spots in Hong Kong, head to travelfreedompodcast.com/003
But, don’t do that right now! Lets get on with this more recent trip to hong Kong. And more on Mr Wong’s later.
First up, shout outs to the companies we worked with in Hong Kong:
We stayed at OZO, part of the Onyx group, its a hotel brand we have been loving as their focus is on sleep. And we LOOOVE sleep. Comfortable beds, great pillows, blackout curtains, quiet rooms and some late checkout options too.
OZO hong kong is on Hong Kong Island near Admiralty and Wan Chai. The bus from the Airport dropped us a minute or two down the street. very close to tasty egg tarts and to the Bowrington cooked food market – more on that later.
We also stayed at Mahjong Design Hostel. They have queen bed dorm rooms. We were surprised at just how much space we had in the room with 6 queen beds in capsule style.
We also had 3 bathrooms to share. As always with the design places we choose to work with, they are beautiful artistic spaces with lots of murals and interesting furniture. Mahjong is in a completely different part of town in the To Kwa Wan area.
It’s less touristy and we discovered some pretty sensational, and award winning honey pork and goose just down the street. more on that later too.
But first… There was really one main reason we HAD to go back to Hong Kong….
[CLIP – Egg Tart]
I love these. I love them so much!!!! Why can they not be made so well in other countries.
So after your essential breakfast snack, Lets do our next food segment! Lets start fancy and get onto the down and dirty later.
Alchemy Concept Restaurant is in Lan Kwai Fong. This is hong kong’s premiere nightlife area. The streets are lined with elegant and exciting bars and restaurants. Craft beer. Wine. Late night drinking and dining. This is the place to be seen in Hong kong.
Alchemy is tucked away a little up the hill.
We arranged to dine at Alchemy twice. And, just to give you a heads up on how impressed we were with many of the dishes, their Calamari made it onto our “Best Food of 2015” list. Damn, it was good!
The restaurant decor has an ancient apothecary theme. Dark wood, potion bottles on the bar. And the chef [NAME?] is actually from france. So, he’s brought his traditional french technique to create a delectable menu.
Our two separate dining experiences… Included a lunch of tapas, but all dishes cooked with french influence. The calamari we mentioned, but also a venison carpaccio with truffle and truffle oil. The rich meat perfectly pink with that strong blast of truffle. A great combo.
Also, the duck breast dish we had was tops. The restaurant is particularly known for their duck and they cook it to perfection.
Although we didn’t get to try the “Pressed Duck”, it’s something you can pre-order as it is complicated to prepare.
A partially roasted duck will have its liver, breast and legs removed. Then the remaining carcass is put into the duck press, a table top domed metal device with a wheel on top. and all the blood and juices are fully squeezed out. That juice is then mixed with the liver and to make a sauce in which the other parts of the duck are served.
A complicated process to make sauce! But I’d be intrigued to taste it one day.
Our second dining experience at Alchemy was “Dine in the dark”. This sort of dining experience is popping up all over the world, but Alchemy is the only place in Hong Kong doing it at this time.
You eat in pitch black darkness, served by blind or partially sighted waiters. You literally cannot see your hand in front of your face. you’ll likely choose to fumble around the plate with your hands as eating with a knife and fork is near impossible.
We opted for the 5 course with wine pairings. We managed to guess about 50% of the foods. It was amazing how confused our tastebud got when we couldn’t see the food. We actually thought a chicken dish was beef at first, and then guessed duck. Still wrong!
They do change up the menu regularly, but we don’t want to spoil it by telling all about what we ate. But, if you want to see some sexy food shots of the food we had for the tapas lunch, and get the exact location for Alchemy, head to the show notes travelfreedompodcast.com/067
We’d actually done dine in the dark in Cambodia previously and the Hong Kong experience, especially as the food was paired with specific wines, was way better.
Bowrington food market
So, after our classy dinning, we of course also needed to get as local as possible. Although street food doesn’t really happen in the same way as it does in much of the rest of Asia, Hong Kong’s closest equivalent is the cooked food markets.
They are all over Hong Kong and we’ll put a link in the show notes to the website that lists all of them.
So, here is us eating some truly awesome Cantonese almost street food.
[CLIP BOWRINGTON]
That lemon chicken kicked ass!
Actually, we visited Bowrington market twice. On the other occasion we had the fried eggplant in tomato mince pork sauce. This dish made it to our top 15 foods in Asia back in 2014. It’s a classic that we’ve never seen anywhere outside of the Canton region.
Also, they served a pork rib lollipop dish. 4 Giant pork ribs in a thin salty and sour sauce. Totally not like the ribs you’d expect. It was almost like having a big piece of pork loin stuck on a tiny stick. But, so succulent. A sort of sweetness in the meat counteracted the sour sauce. Awesome!
Some photos and translations on the show notes and in the photos.
Aqua luna
We aren’t going to be 100% food. So, what else did we do?
We went for a harbour cruise – with wine!
Turns out wine is a fabulous accompaniment to cruising.
We took a tour with Aqua Luna on this old style junk boat with huge red sails. The inside of the boat is all intricately carved wood, and of course, there is a bar.
Hong Kong made it into the guinness book of records for its world famous Symphony of lights. At 8pm every night the whole harbour comes alive with colourful beams dancing to music in a 360 degree panorama. Skyscrapers around the coast line are loaded with different lights and they all come together to create a 15 minute show.
Being out on the water, right in the middle of it, allows you to watch both sides of the performance, rather than just watching one side from the shore.
It’s also really nice out there – especially on a hot evening, you get the cool breeze! They also run a sunset tour which could be a fantastic way to get some great Hong Kong Photos.
Honey Pork / Goose
So, after that non food interlude, it’s back to the food!
We mentioned earlier that we stayed at a design hostel called Mahjong. And just down the street was some of the best roast meat in Hong Kong…
[Honey Pork Clip]
We’ll put the location of this place on the show notes.
Wine And spirits fair
As if eating wasn’t enough for us, we also had to do additional drinking. Who’d have guessed?
Our trip to hong kong happened to coincide with the international wine and spirits fair. It’s huge! Hundreds of stands from all over. We particularly enjoyed the wine, and port from Portugal. They were actually the featured country sponsoring the fair.
A surprise came in the form of wines from Thailand. After drinking such terrible wine at Inle Lak in Burma, we had figured SE Asia was not the ideal place for making wine.
But silver lake winery in Thailand had some great flavours to offer.
Gotta say, we are not sponsored by any of these wineries, we just happened to like them!
Also, Mollydooker from Australia did a great job.
Anyways, if you like wine, try and make sure your next trip to HK lands about the time of the fair. It’s probably the largest alcohol show I’ve been to. Way more wine than anyone could ever drink – but we gave it a really good go.
Mr Wong’s!
Finally today, we couldn’t leave without a mention of Mr Wong’s. For about $8 USD Mr Wong will serve you all you can eat and all you can drink.
There is a massive cool box full of beers in the alley at the side of the restaurant. It’s a help yourself situation. Just keep going back. The food changes, it’s sort of a they’ll just cook you some stuff. There isn’t a menus. It’s pretty much, whatever they have that day.
Egg rolls, stir fried beef. Big plates of fried rice. you will be full, and drunk by the end.
Give that Hong kong is a pricey place, this is a sensational deal. It’s not gourmet food, but given that the beers cost at least $1 each, after you’ve had 3 or 4, Mr Wong is running at a loss, you’d think!
We did joke about it being a cover for money laundering as there is no way he’s making profit… surely. Or maybe the beer fell off the back of a lorry.
If so, Well, money laundering tasted good!
Still, this is a joke. We are joking. We don’t know anything about this and we are not making any legal claims right now!
Mr wong is hilarious, just the most random middle aged guy. The place is mostly full of students, especially foreign students. Mr Wong likes to flirt with all the girls, asking to marry them and such. While I think his wife is in the kitchen.
Oh, Mr Wong! Still, he’s not sleazy, it’s just funny and random.
So, go fill yourself with beer and enjoy Mr Wong’s over friendly hospitality.
Travel Homework
Get the dine in the dark experience at home. Get someone else to plate your food, so you don’t know where things are on the plate, and then Try and eat your meal with a knife and fork with your eyes closed.
It’s harder than you think!
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DISCLAIMER: We are affiliated with World nomads. We received complimentary experiences from Alchemy, Ozo, Mahjong, Aqua Luna, HK Wine & Spirits Fair – companies we love and support. Some other links may also be affiliate links – these links help support the podcast financially. All our opinions, as always, are our own and we haven’t embellished our experiences.
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