Hong Kong Eats

As one of the first posts on our little trip to Hong Kong, I thought I'd get the mouths salivating at the sight of some of the food we encountered while there.

I guess you'd expect plenty of "Chinese" food, but there was perhaps only like one thing I ate that reminded me of anything "Panda Express" hahaha! Everything else was basically different slants on much of the stuff we are able to eat here in Thailand.We get a steady diet of deep-fried pork belly, char sui port and crisp duck here. The one thing that stood out and seemed to be at most of the bbq joints was the crispy goose. Even when we asked for duck, they said they only served goose. Pae and mom got goose several times. I had my usual pork and pork!! I did actually taste the goose, although Pae said I cheated cuz I dipped it in the sweet plum sauce, which overpowered the flavor of the meat.Noodles and rice, staples in Hong Kong. The noodles were pretty normal and kinda hard to compare to Thai noodles, Thai noodles are just THAT good. The spice involved was totally different. The one thing cool about the Hong Kong noodles was the crispiness of the noodles, boiled yet still a little crisp, not al-dente...but they kinda popped when you git them. Not too soft, not chewy, just crispy!The portions of everything we ate was absolutely "western" size...I'm so used to getting a small bowl of rice and just enough of whatever I order to be able to change the color of the rice...Hong Kong, they fill the whole plate with rice and pour just as much food right on top!Clay pots were cool to see, even if they were a little bland. They just fire up the burners on the outside of the store and take orders. The cook throws whatever meats and veggies on top and they quick cook the rice in the clay pots. lots of the rice sticks to the bottom of the pot. One time I had the burnt rice Korean style, burnt yet still edible (nurungji). The second time I had the dish, it was actually burnt black and didn't taste so good! They used the parts of the chicken like the back and neck more than other larger easily chewed pieces. I had to take a lot of time to get all of the bones out of my chicken. Otherwise, I think If I knew how to use all of the spices properly, the clay pots would have been pretty good. Dad had a really nice looking one with char sui on it, raw egg aside.Dim Sum, okay, we had some pretty awesome dim sum for breakfast! Pae and I had watched "The Layover- Hong Kong" and saw a dim sum restaurant that looked pretty good. we googled the address and made our way to its location early in the morning. We arrived before 10:00 only to find a line about 30 people or so long...restaurant still not open. We got menus and waited for the place to open. Everyone in line was raving about how good the place was so we waited. It took us a while to figure out that we weren't really waiting in line, but just waiting for our number to be called...NUMBER?? Yeah, so I belatedly went and put our name on the list and we got number 11. An hour later we were in and ordered WAY TOO MUCH. Even people outside still waiting in the cold were amazed at how much food was coming to our table. Got a little carried away when looking at the menu!! It was pretty good, two of the dim sums weren't so great, but the other ten were real good. Well worth the wait!One thing about Thai food is that it's difficult to get an actual serving of vegetables. Veggies come mixed with most dishes, but other than corn on the cob, getting a dish of peas, beans, carrots, broccoli is very rare. Seemed similar in Hong Kong, although we did order a plate of Chinese broccoli at almost every meal.Another thing that we saw on "The Layover" was that the Hong Kongers comfort food of choice is macaroni soup...described as "throw everything in your fridge into a pot with elbow noodles and boil", Mom, Dad and Pae all enjoyed it's hearty carbohydratedness (I like to make up words). I'm guessing this is one of the dishes influenced by the British presence in Hong Kong for so long.One of my friends who lives in Hong Kong said that there is one eating establishment for every four people in Hong Kong! Amazing...and we only hit about 8 of them!!