Sham Shui Po - wah, amazing!

I actually grew up on Kowloon side, once a proud resident of Mei Foo near the end of the red line of the MTR, but a mere 6 months of living in Central made me a firm Hong Kong Islander. For those of you who don't come from Hong Kong, this may seem absurd; Kowloon is about 5 minutes boat ride away from the Hong Kong Island side, and that is probably the most time consuming way to travel between the two. It is another one of these Honkie neuroses.

We all know though that Kowloon is actually better in many ways, especially if you want to see Hong Kong as it is to most locals, rather than just the shopping malls and skyscrapers. Caris and I headed to Sham Shui Po (深水埗), apparently a bit of a foodie heaven, furnished with some of Juliana's rather thorough research.

We were actually looking for a noodle shop when we stumbled across 添好運, probably one of the most famous dim sum places in Hong Kong now after the Michelin bods decided to award it one star. Sceptics have all said it was Michelin's attempt to rid itself of its French- and fine dining-centric tastes, that these Frenchies know nothing about Asian food really. To be fair, the owner is the ex-executive chef at 龍景軒, the only Chinese restaurant in the world with 3 stars. He wanted to start an egalitarian dim sum places, serving the best food at decent prices, an aspiration I can only applaud.

Rumours have it that queues can be up to 4 hours at the original Mong Kok branch, but the second branch in Sham Shui Po is much bigger, and at 3pm we literally walked straight in. So did not plan on having dim sum, but oh well! The decor isn't much to look at, the tea is attractively served in plastic jugs on your table:

The menu is refreshingly small, especially as it seems to be the trend for restaurants to have new frang-dangled modern varieties. There are about 25 items, with a mainly traditional slant. They didn't have my favourite 牛柏葉 (tripe, mmmm!), so we decided to stick to everyone's family favourites. The compulsory 蝦餃 prawn dumplings had very fresh prawns, but the skin was 麻麻地:

The 牛腸粉 beef cheung fun was a huge let down, to the point of being really very bland. Avoid.

I forgot to take a picture of the 蘿蔔糕 turnip cake, but it didn't look that much out of the ordinary. But it tasted much more refined than your usual dim sum restaurant version, with clear shreds of turnip, very little flour, very good. And at $10 a portion, a complete bargain.

I guess their signature dish is their 酥皮叉燒包, basically a 叉燒包 with a 菠蘿包 topping (I have given up trying to translate at this point - basically a very sophisticated pork bun!). We saw them being ferried to almost every table, to the extent that a 4-top right near us had about 4 portions to themselves (3 buns per portion!). Not only do they look pretty, blushing slightly from their time in the oven, they tasted AMAZING. Just the right balance of sweet and savoury, the bun wasn't heavy, so so moreish. And this is $12 a portion, yes, about a quid for 3 buns!

Knowing Honkies, I'm sure the place is packed more for the prices (cheap even by Hong Kong's normal standards) rather than having a consistently wow menu. Thankfully though, the Sham Shui Po branch also allows you to book, even for a private room where there is an additional book-in-advance menu, featuring more funky stuff, like fried foie gras dumpling and abalone with chicken puff. The minimum spend for the private room is $1000 though, even with 10 people, it'd be hard to spend that much at these prices! Definitely worth a trip mid-afternoon just for the pork bun.

The place that stole our hearts though in Sham Shui Po was the humble little 公和荳品廠, literally a factory specialising in tofu and tofu related products. Non-Chinese just don't get tofu, but it has a very special place in all Chinese hearts, and at 4pm this place was packed. It is exactly what we mean by local local, this place probably hasn't changed for about 50 years. There was a hilarious sello-taped sign advertising 'new products', the sello-tape so yellow it is probably older than me.

Check out the mega old school tap for the soy milk!! You can also just about make out the uber-dirty looking factory floor to the right of the photo:

Now, my mum makes the best 豆腐花 in the world. She only ever makes it at home (from scratch!!!) back in Ipswich, which means I haven't eaten it in well over 2 years now, but even so, I almost never bother with this yummy dessert when I go out. It was clearly the speciality at this place though, check out their container!!!

In case I upset my mum, I will say that their 豆腐花 is definitely on par with that I have at home. The hot version which we both had was impossibly 滑, the sugar syrup just sweet enough.

We also sampled their stuffed tofu, the frying and the 鯉魚 fish stuffing took away from the taste of the tofu itself in my opinion. We still lapped it all up though :p

I have been looking into trademarks and IP a little this week, and I was thoroughly impressed that they had a certificate on the wall listing their trademark, which is from 1909!!!!! We did leave this place a little worried for its future, the staff looks like they work so hard for their cash, we're pretty sure the next generation will not want to carry this kind of thing on :(

Thoroughly fortified with dim sum and tofu, we nevertheless continued to eat more. We saw a big crowd outside this shop, so we decided it had to be good, and it turned out to be on Juliana's original list. 八仙餅家 specialises in traditional biscuits, things like 皮蛋酥 century-egg puff and 杏仁餅 almond biscuits. There was a non-stop stream of people stopping and picking up a little something:

Caris got a 核桃酥 walnut biscuit, something I have probably not eaten for literally 25 years. But once it entered my mouth I immediately got that familiar feeling of rich butter and sugar, yet impossibly 鬆 at the same time. Probably the second best thing I ate today after that pork bun.

We kept eating sugary snacks of yesteryear, including something from a shop that specialises in 糕. Now, the word 糕 really is hard to translate. A lot of people use 'cake', but it really doesn't get there. 糕 is normally steamed rather than baked, and can come in many varieties, some of which are more 'cake' like, but others, especially those made of rice flour rather than wheat flour, are more wobbly and tight in texture. 坤記糕品 only sells the wobbly variety:

There was 紅豆糕 red bean 'cake', 芝麻糕 sesame seed 'cake', 白糖糕 literally white sugar 'cake', but I went for a 砵仔糕 little basin cake (no photo, sorry!), made of yellow sugar and rice flour, mainly as I know my dad has been looking for a place with good 砵仔糕. Unfortunately, it wasn't really that wow, and pretty expensive at $4.50 (aren't I cheap, that isn't even 40p!).

I will round off this rather long post with something even more unhealthy. I somehow managed to avoid getting fish balls or 雞蛋仔 egg waffles on the street, but Caris couldn't quite resist getting some 炸大腸. I won't translate, but look at the picture. What does it look like? Gross? Well, think about the body part after that :D