Back in Hong Kong: Day 2 jukfest

This post is mainly for Dave's benefit, as I know it will drive him nuts

Still on my quest to find a congee breakfast, I had a good google session last night and found somewhere nearby, and it's apparently quite famous! I quite like the fact that these little places get a bit notorious in Hong Kong and people flock to them clutching their food magazines. Anyway, the place was 生記 (Sang Kee) on Burd Street in Sheung Wan, which also has a few other branches including one in Yau Ma Tei.

The menu was really quite tremendous - you can basically get any combination of congee (or juk) containing fish belly (their specialty), beef, Chinese mud carp fish balls (鯪魚球), fish bones, pork liver, lean pork, preserved egg, chicken, pork heart, and probably some other things too. I wasn't really quite brave enough to try the fish belly, so I opted for a 'ping' of beef, fish balls, and preserved egg:

I was in juk heaven!!! Exactly exactly what I was after. The juk itself was very soft, very 綿, and didn't really taste that MSG-fied, although they did give you a very tasty dish of soy with spring onions which definitely was just MSG and soy!! The ingredients were also rather fine. The fish balls were just perfect - favourful, bouncy, with a nice bit of coriander through them. The beef was silky smooth, and the portion more than generous.

Given that I will only have this one time there, obviously I had to try some of the side dishes, which quite disturbed the waitress I think!!! I ordered both the fried fish cake (basically the fish ball but fried to give some crunch) and dough stick:

It probably was too much in the end, but the waitress just kept asking me 'are you sure??!!' when I kept ordering more things. Certainly not the behaviour of a normal Hong Kong girl to ask for so much food! But they were both just perfect accompaniments to the juk, I scoffed it all! All this came to HK$50, a little expensive perhaps for a juk breakfast, but very good it was.

The waitress herself deserves a comedy sketch! She practically runs the place, and it's amazing to see her memorise every single order in her head, shouting at anyone getting in her way. She also likes to burst into song at random intervals. This place illustrates exactly why I love Hong Kong cafes - there may be a guy right behind you slicing up the pork livers, and the place really isn't that clean, but it's all about the food. And you can have little giggle to yourself about the waitress too :)