Eat in Hong Kong - Cantonese Food

The majority of Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong are Cantonese, this is not unexpected since most HK Chinese are originally from Guangdong Province. Among Chinese, Cantonese cuisine is considered the finest, since years back, number of Chinese emperors have recruited Cantonese chefs to prepare food for them.

Cantonese food, which is noted for food preparation with high quality (usually either steamed and stir-fried), is known for its fresh, delicate flavors. Few drop of oil and few spices are normally used in order to retain the natural flavors of the various ingredients, this also mainly due to Cantonese are sticklers for freshness. For those who are particulars about cholesterol, Cantonese food is highly recommended. On the other hand, those with active taste buds may find it rather insipid.

Most of the Cantonese like seafood, hence one of the best choice offers in a Cantonese restaurant is fish. It is preferable to steam the whole fish prepared with fresh ginger and spring onions, but equally good are slices for good fish types such as red mullet, sole and bream.  While enjoying the fish, Cantonese believe it brings bad luck to turn a fish over on the plate, so the proper thing to do is to eat the top part of the fish, lift the bone in the air and then extract the bottom part of the fish meat with your chopsticks. Other well-liked seafood choices include sea cucumber, abalone, squid, shark fin, shrimp and crab.

Another famous Cantonese dish is dim sum, which means "light snack" but whose Chinese characters literally translated as "to touch the heart".  Traditionally, dim sum is taken as breakfast, brunch and lunch, and with Chinese tea. In Hong Kong it is very common to use in Sunday family outings, where family members are gather together for chit-chat and enjoy the food altogether. The dim sum consists mainly of finely chopped meat, vegetables, shrimps, crabmeat that wrapped in thin dough and then either boiled, fried, steamed or braised. Therefore Dim sum includes steamed spareribs, fried spring rolls, fishbal, and dumplings.

Many Cantonese restaurants offer dim sum from since early in the morning until late afternoon, in 70s it served from trolleys wheeled between tables, and the waitress shouting out the name of the dim sim in her trolly, but nowadays just as often available from a written menu. The trolleys are piled high with steaming bamboo baskets, so ask the waiter to let you peek inside. If you like what you see, simply let the waiter knows. For big restaurants,  they can offer up to nearly hundreds different  kinds of dim sum.  The cantonese favourites are cha siu bau (barbecued pork buns), har gau (steamed shrimp dumplings), shiu mai (reamed minced pork and shrimp dumplings). A serving of dim sum usually consists of two or four pieces on the bamboo basket and cost about HK$20 - HK$30 per dish.

If u would like to have some special and light supper, try congee, which is a rice porridge usually topped with a meat (can be chicken, fish, pork, crab, shrimp or vegetable). Most of the Hong Kong traditional eating outlets specialize in congee and "wun tun meen" - a bowl of noodle soup with fresh shrimp dumplings. You should not miss it!