Shots from HK

Bonnies Dad at work - Their family owns a small fruit stall amongst the fruit stalls at a local market

Fish skins

Num num fish ball and meatball soup.

Ascending the Hong Kong escalators

Duly noted

 

HK style

Congee

In Hong Kong Bonnie took us to a local place for breakfast porridge, which they call congee. Supposedly one of the best in HK. Small joint, very packed inside. Like a typical HK restaurant, chock full of people with not enough space to sit, so we sat down at the table across from a few other people already eating.

Dennis & I had Bonnie order for us.Out came the congee. This porridge is actually made of rice, and cooked for 10 hours or so. Inside the porridge was 'organs'. Specifically, that I could tell, were small sections of intestines, and livers that really looked exactly like a liver. Also, balls of fish and balls of mystery meat.

Needless to say, I wasn't a fan of the organs. Not exactly the jump-starting complement to your coffee (Nescafe blows HK coffee out of the water by the way, if that is even possible). In addition, the texture of the congee was very soup like and viscous. I'll pass on seconds.

The congee place on HK island

 

Deer & Dinosaurs

Hong Kong is a great place to find some really weird crap! Thanks in part to their traditional medicinal approach. Here are a few:

Dinosaur Teeth?

Deer Fetus, what the hell!

Dim Sum

When my Hong Kong host said we were going for dim sum, I was pretty excited. Naively, I had the impression based on what I had previously tried in the bay area.... that it is essentially just delicious puffy buns filled with pork and a few other things.

We arrived at a packed 2nd floor restaurant after 2pm, as the dim sum is 30% off after the lunch rush from 1-2. We told Bonnie to order us whatever to give us a good idea of what dim sum in HK is really like. They first brought out a couple dishes. A plate of dumplings filled with bbq pork and another dumpling-ish thing (with a corn-bread like outside) filled with some veggies. Then a group of four more dishes came out. Chicken feet, a soy based square item, more dumplings, (this time sweet ones filled with egg yolk and sugar), and a pork/veggie roll. Then, four more came out. Fish balls, meat balls, duck feet, and rice. Then, two more. Baby pidgeon and dumplings with shrimp and some fish eggs on top. In total, probably about 10-12 dishes which we split between the three off us. I didn't really know that dim sum in fact is something akin to tapas. Small dishes encompassing a very wide variety of foods. My stomach struggled a bit to manage all the new tastes, but overall, everything was good. Not so sure I'll be a frequent consumer of chicken or duck feet, however. They taste okay, but I can't really get over the visual while I'm eating it. The pidgeon, on the other hand, was actually quite tasty. Bonnie got to sample the brain, I'll leave that for next time.

bbq pork dumplings

chicken feet, soy, dumplings, and pork/ham thingers.

Add caption

pidgeon is served

Bonnie goes for the pidgeon brain