Chitchat|Eating Out in Hong Kong (English)

🎙️Cantonese Crash Course: Hong Kong’s Culinary Scene

Transcript

Welcome to Canto Be Like. This episode we teach Cantonese through the lens of Hong Kong’s most iconic food scenes! In this season, we’re diving fork-first into the city’s culinary madness—from sizzling dai pai dongs (大牌檔) where wok masters rule, to cha lau (茶樓) dim sum dramas, and the wild fusion of cha chaan tengs (茶餐廳).

You’ll learn:
✔️ Survival Cantonese (how to order like a local without getting side-eyed)
✔️ Secret menu hacks (like "少甜少冰" for no-sugar-no-ice drinks)
✔️ Unwritten rules (how to fill in the dim sum order list)
✔️ Cultural tidbits (how dim sum was served in the old days)

Each episode blends language lessons, humor, and insider stories—perfect for travelers, foodies, or anyone who’s ever cried over a pineapple bun (it has no pineapple!).

Subscribe now for other episodes to hone your Canto and learn HK culture!

Transcript

Speaker: 0:02

Hello, welcome back to a new episode of Canto Be Like, a Cantonese and English bilingual podcast helping you to learn Cantonese and Hong Kong culture. I'm your host, Venus, and today is our 8th episode of Season 1 of C anto Be Like. In this episode, we are going to start our third topic of the season, which is eating out in Hong Kong. Today is going to be our chit chat session in English to get you up to speed with eating out in Hong Kong and what our culinary scene offers. The second episode is as always going to be a listening exercise and the third episode is going to be a phrase and vocab episode. And by the way, the listening will be fully in Cantonese and the phrase and vocab episode will be a mix of English and Cantonese. Make sure you follow and subscribe to Canto Be Like so that you know when we update the next two episodes of this mini series of eating out in Hong Kong. For those of you that are new to the show, in this season we have already done two other The first one was grocery shopping in Hong Kong and the second was getting around in Hong Kong. So, be sure to check them out after you finish this episode. And without further ado, let's start with our topic today, eating out in Hong Kong. So for a lot of people, the most iconic Hong Kong food is probably dim sum, w hich is like a shared dish of like some of my friends called it mini tapas so like a collection of mini dishes to share with your dining companions and it's usually in a very traditional Chinese restaurant. So dim sum. And those dim sum restaurants, we call it cha lau in Cantonese. And the second iconic Cantonese restaurant is cha chaan teng so the tea houses, tea restaurants, a bit like diner or pubs if you're from the UK. So they are go-to eateries and it's very delicious, very cheap, very wholesome and we go there on a daily basis. And the third iconic restaurant in my opinion would be dai pai dong. So these are the less known type of restaurants, Cantonese restaurants and dai pai dong is more of like a gangster, more rough and more like a street food kind of situation. And we will talk a bit more about that later. And Hong Kong is such a food paradise. If you're bored of local Cantonese food, you can always find something that fits your taste buds. And we are so close to a lot of countries with good food. For example, within my living radius, within maybe a kilometer from my house. There are Thai food, Vietnamese food, Japanese food, Korean food and of course a lot of western restaurants, all within 10 minutes walking distance from my house. So it's a true global culinary scene and I don't even live on Hong Kong island. So you can imagine the food scene is going to be even more dynamic and diverse there. And since our podcast is also in English, I assume a lot of you are from western countries. Hong Kong also offers a lot of good western food. You can always find something relatively authentic to your local version of the cuisine and it's either easiest to find them on the Hong Kong island like Soho and I personally know from Kennedy Town and Sai Ying Pun also have a lot authentic western cuisine and I will add on a little bit about Soho. So actually me and my friends go there on a weekly basis. I usually go there for like a Friday night dinner or like on the weekend for brunch with my friends sometimes even grabbing a drink at the cocktail bars or speakeasys and yeah I will give some recommendation if that interests you. So, Soho recommendation, if you want pizza, I would say Fini is a good option but they do like American style pizza instead of your traditional Italian sourdough kind of situation so beware of that. And I personally really love French cuisine and I found Bouchon on Elgin Street, which I think is quite good especially the bread like is very soft it reminds me of Parisian bistro but though to be completely fair the quality of Bouchon is just a regular bistro you find in Paris it's not like exceptional but for Hong Kong it's still very good and there are quite a few good restaurants in or near PMQ which are like an indie artsy area like a district which is very touristy and easy to access from Central and yeah for drinking which I don't do anymore, but back when I was still a social drinker I would go to The Old Man quite often I love the mixology it's really creative and you can and the staffs and the staff are really friendly and like they do recommend really they do give really precise recommendation on cocktail according to your taste which I found is super nice so I've been there with my cousin from New York and a couple of friends from Europe and they all gave positive reviews for The Old Man. And another cocktail bar or speakeasy I go to quite often is, I actually forgot the name, but it's in Tai Kwun so Tai Kwun so it's actually hidden in block D or block F I can't remember but you can give it give it a Google it's quite famous. And the atmosphere, the ambiance is just amazing and since it's a speakeasy, fewer people know of it, so you have more space to yourself and unlike The Old Man which always has a massive queue and sometimes you have to stand, this speakeasy in Tai Kwun is just quite cozy and you can stay there for quite a while to enjoy your drink and your chat with your friend without worrying that you are stopping someone from getting in. So that's Soho from me and I'm sure you will find something that fits your taste but since this podcast is about local Hong Kong culture, I will leave you to Google and explore and let's zoom in on more local food and restaurants. So alright let's focus on local Cantonese restaurants and I picked the three main ones which are cha lau, usually mainly, not mainly, usually for dim sum and sometimes they do serve more traditional feasts and like formal gathering kind of Chinese dishes and the second option choice of Cantonese restaurants is dai pai dong and the th ird and most common one is cha caan teng, so right let's start with dai pai dong which I think It's the least common or the least heard of in the overseas Chinese diaspora or for foreigners and even some local kids might not have been there because they're becoming rarer and rarer nowadays in Hong Kong. So what is dai pai dong? The literal translation is big license store and that's because it's a derivation of the government issued large permit in the 1950s so it's just a historical thing and it's stuck. And it's also quite literal like dai is, so dai pai dong, three characters, and dai is big. Pai is like a store, and dong is also like a store for like a street car kind of situation. Like for a store in the wet market, we call it a dong as well. So it's just a big store selling food and You can think of it as like a chaotic family kitchen that sells street food with like flimsy table and kind of like out in the element and Oh, yeah, sometimes even no air conditioning. So very raw, very OG kind of vibe. So if you ever been to Chinatown, it's probably the dodgiest looking spot but it is for like Michelin level cooking skills and super high cost- to-value ratio and Sometimes maybe a lot of cockroaches kind of thing so maybe because of the hygiene and the presence of cockroaches and even sometimes you see rats there. I'm not even joking because it's it's just how bad the hygiene is Some people just don't prefer them and they don't bring kids there because of some worries about cleanliness but a lot of people still love them because the food there is just so economical, cheap and just amazing and there's a Hong Kong word for it which is wok hei which means the how should I put this the vibe of the wok literally so it's like wok hei is like it's so firey it's so crispy it's so the cooking skill is just so on point kind of meaning and a lot of people just love it for the taste and the price so there's definitely a market for that also a lot of uni students love to go there because they have big tables cater to host a big crowd and the price is very cheap and they open till late with a constant supply of cheap beer and it's just like a clubbing like a post clubbing meal and post night out meal like you need something cheap something greasy to absorb the alcohol and you go there and chill with your friends till sunrise so a funny personal story of my mom so she when she was in uni she would go to dai pai dong with her batch mates and they would get pissed drunk there and she would throw up under the tree outside the dai pai dong and the tree actually died like i'm i think my mom killed the tree yeah the tree died so that's a yeah funny story so back to dai pai dong itself let me give you some recs for what to order for the first time and how to pronounce them so the first one would be gong chao ngo hor which is beef fried rice noodle so the ultimate wok hei test so to test if a dai pai dong is good if it has like enough wok hei just order gong chao ngo hor and you will know and the second dish is si jiu sin yau so salt and pepper squid like crispy and spicy and usually comes with a dipping vinegar so it's really a good side dish with alcohol and beer and the third one which is my personal favorite is ho zai jin bing so an oyster omelet is like so good. Like the balance between the egg and the seafood and the umami is just so on point. So these are my recs. So try them out. Let me walk you through a meal, like from door to payment to bill, what is going to happen at dai pai dong. So at the entrance you greet a staff that usually stop someone standing at the entrance. So you just tell them the number of people dining and they will seat you at a table and then they might give you one time disposable chopsticks. So. The authentic thing to do is to rub the chopstick together to remove splinters So it's just something we do and then you wash your cups and bowls and like all the utensils with like a communal bowl and tea and water on the table, so you wash it and then you can Depending on where the dai pai dong is if it's just next to the road and It's kind of out in the open. You just pour the water onto the ground. Yes, like you can literally do that and You order you can try out what I told you just now so order gong chao ngo hor, si jiu sin yau and then ho beng or another thing you can do is just tell to point at something and tell them I want This like ngo yiu nee gor I want that ngo yiu gor gor and just order something you can't really go wrong and They won't ask you if you are allergic to something or if you don't want something you have to tell them they Don't expect service from them it's an eatery It's not a like Michelin restaurants like just don't expect anything So the food will arrive roughly after five to ten minutes They're just so efficient and just take your time to eat chill and like no time limit But sometimes they might ask you to speed up if there is a queue waiting outside depends So they're just usual restaurants of your eat your food enjoy your company Et cetera, et cetera, but so after you finish, of course you pay there are two ways to do this, either you wave at the waiter and they will bring the bill over and you do it at the table or you just go to the cashier and get your bill and pay. But do note that they mostly just take cash, at most they take octopus cards and it's just really uncommon for them to accept credit cards. They might do electronic payment like WeChat Pay or Alipay, but credit card is... payment is really not a thing so be sure you have the appropriate means of payment before you arrive otherwise it's going to be quite awkward and so to which dai pai dong to go i actually go to one in Fo Tan because it's the nearest in my house and that's the one my parents brought me there when i was a kid so i went to this one called junjun in Fo Tan but i do know a lot of people go to temple street or somewhere on the island for dai pai dong but i'm not an expert in that just google dai pai dong and it will come up so dai pai dong is d-a-i and then space p-a-i space and d-o-n-g dai pai dong so something will come up and yeah so next off we are going to talk about yum cha and actually yum cha is not the restaurant itself the restaurant the type of restaurant is called cha lau so you yum cha at a cha lau and cha lau you can think of a very old school a tea house like round table stained table clothes maybe an auntie pushing a cart around with dim sum on it and and yeah so cha lau is just like a chinese/ cantonese restaurant that does dim sum specialize in dim sum and the act of consuming dim sum and drinking tea is a yum cha which literally translate to drink tea. Yes. I think the atmosphere at cha lau is like very convivial, very familial and like you go there with your relatives and family and it's more like a family outing kind of thing so it's like a grandma living room that serves a hundred types of dumpling or tapas if you like and everyone just talks and drinks tea and gossips and the price point is usually higher than dai pai dong because of the environment of the restaurants it's usually more delicate and are established compared to like a street food restaurant like Dai Pai Dong. And actually my family goes there almost every weekend for Saturday brunch with my grandma and the dim sums we ordered are very fixed each family has their own set or combination of dim sum and choice of tea just something they are used to and for us the tea is actually we get two types most people get one but we are very picky I guess so we have two we pampered ourselves on saturday morning so we get poh leh which is pu'er and tiet gun yum which is I think I think it's a white tea so Tie Guan Yin for the mandarin speaker and Tie Guan Yin is for my mom and dad and me and my grandma she has a pot of a poh leh and then my favorite is the shrimp dumpling har gao my dad is actually he eats everything but he loves congee so for him is uh what is it called pei dan saoyok jok so stinky egg like the hundred year thousand year egg with um like a bit of bits of meat in congee that kind of congee so pei dan saoyok jok and for my grandma is uh another type of dumpling called chiu zao fun guo and for my mom I think she loves hong joh goh which is red date cake so um on top of that those are usually um the fixture like it appears every week and then we will get cheung fun so like actually don't know how to explain this in English like a rice roll with meat stuffing or seafood stuffing and we might get ngau yuk kao so a beef ball and also we might get char siu bao so a pork bun and something sweet so that's our combination of dim sum and yes I am also going to walk you through some how the whole meal is gonna happen So you arrive you see in the old days you just tell a staff like a Hostess that you're there and they will just arrange table for you, but now in the digital age you get a ticket from the machine and you just wait in the lobby to Get your table and When why when you were getting the ticket it will ask you whether you want Dap toi or mm dap toi So dap toi is sharing table. Dap is sharing toi is table and mm dap toi is mmm. It's no so no sharing table Dab toy So yeah, you need to decide about that in the beginning. Usually if you decide to share the table It will be quicker and if you are if you only have one person or two people they They usually don't give you a whole table which is for four people usually So for one to two people you just got a Dab toy But my family usually we go as a party of four we get our own table and once you're seated Waiter will come and ask you What tea you want, so The usual option is as I said pole tikkun yam han pin sao me and What else? Those are the normal ones they don't do fancy tea is just It's just those things and I do know at some cha lau they allow you to bring your own tea So you give them your own loose leaf tea and they will brew it for you in the pot Yeah, that's that and then they will hand you with the Dim sum pay Ordering paper like the list and There are usually some discounted ones so we can check that out first so discounted dim sum and one another list for like the normal price one, which is the full menu and A card to record if your dim sum arrived so for easy Payment at the cashier. So on the dim sum list they It's usually just in Cantonese, but they Actually, they don't even have a picture. So that's a quite difficult for non Chinese people to figure out what to order But if you do read Chinese it just goes like this or maybe you can Google translate it. So it goes like this. There's a box next to the name of the dish. You just do, so if you want one of that, you put one and then draw a big circle around it. So the people will see you have chosen that. And then once you're finished with circling and writing and choosing, you wave or stand up, whatever. Just do some big movement and get the attention of a waiter and hand them the list, like the paper. And then your dim sum will slowly arrive. And in some old cha lau, people will actually push around a dim sum cart and then you just pick whatever is there. And that's becoming less and less common in Hong Kong. Usually you just order and they make it in the kitchen to avoid wastage because if they do the cart thing, they might end up not selling everything. So it's slowly, they're slowly phasing that out. But that does happen at some traditional cha lau. And a lot of people do go there for nostalgia of the old days where the cart thing was the norm. As to where to eat dim sum or like a good cha lau recommendation, I actually don't have a personal preference. I go to those chain ones, chain cha lau with my parents and grandma, we just choose whatever is the most convenient and the one we usually go is just right next door to our house and it's nothing special but it's good enough for us. But I do know. So lin heung lau and tim ho wan are supposed to be good and quite famous, so maybe you can give that a try, but if you ask me just go to anyone, they are usually quite good, so no need to fret over which one to go. So the final Cantonese restaurant, type of Cantonese restaurants is cha caan teng, which literally means tea restaurant, but it's actually more like a diner or a pub that serves fast food. And you can think of it as... uh 50-60s hong kong meets western diner kind of thing and is my dad's favorite he actually goes to

a cha caan teng to get breakfast every morning and a full set is usually just 30 to 40 HKD depending on which one you go to so very cheap and wholesome and quick it's it's like a survival food kind of restaurant like go there for a quick meal quick and easy and just get it done and over with um and cha caan teng is your restaurant so it usually opens at 6 am i think because um when i was still in school i would order a sandwich at a cha caan teng at 7: 31:42

15 and they and the restaurant and the cha caan teng is like buzzing already with customers so i assume they open quite early the order gets processed very quickly usually your food arrives within five to ten minutes if it doesn't arrive after 15 minutes like do check with them there must be something wrong with your order because it shouldn't take that long and i usually go to cha caan teng for breakfast with my dad so my go-to is uh satay ngau yuk mai sin with iced lemon tea less sugar less ice so i will say it like this um I've seen dongleng, char siu, tim siu bing, and that's my order. satay ngau yuk mai sin is just a beef in satay sauce in rice noodle and it comes with an iced lemon tea and usually people will give further order on the iced level and sugar level. And yeah, that's my order. And when I was still in school, I would go to a cha caan teng for afternoon tea, like a quick snack after school. And I would get a side dol siu, which is like a deep fried French toast with Yit Lai Sa, so hot milk tea. And by the way, the way they make milk tea is very creative. So to remove tea bits in the milk tea, they use um lady stockings like leggings as like a sieve to remove the bits the tea bits so it's just i think they're very um innovative and um that's the spirit of the hong kong people i guess so um for cha caan teng it's just um a combination of dai pai dong and cha lau and in terms of how the whole thing works so you go there get seated usually seven to ninety percent of the time you share a table with someone because of the quick turnover of the restaurant they can't avoid to waste seats um to have empty seats so they just squish uh everyone together like to maximize profit which is understandable because the price of the meal is so low so they don't have a high profit margin so that makes sense i mean at least it makes sense to me and then um they will just uh give you the menu and um they won't they won't ask you to order just yet they they they won't wait wait wait on you like a proper restaurant you have to raise your hand and say to get that attention um and then they will come and usually the order lasts for less than 30 seconds you better make up your mind before you summon a waiter otherwise they're gonna be be like they're gonna be like rawrrrr kind of so yeah um they're gonna be enraged so do make up your mind before you get someone to come because no second chance or you get a very pissed waiter then you order the food arrive in five to ten minutes you eat quite quickly i guess at least we do because we know um someone out there outside restaurants is waiting for the table so you usually finish your meal in like 15 to 20 minutes um if your dish is empty your cups is empty a waiter will come and be like oh so you're finished are you ready to get your bill and then you go pay and then they usually take cash and octopus i know some do take credit cards but you need to have a minimum spend of 100 or 200 depending on the cha caan teng so um yeah that's cha caan teng for you so um i just realized i've been yapping too much and i haven't even finished half of what i planned for this episode and i don't want to make it too long for you so i will leave the rest of the content to another episode so i'm going to cover the general etiquette of dining in a local Cantonese restaurant and how to use a magic word mm goi so yeah do stay tuned i will be posting that shortly so alright guys thanks for listening to another episode of Canto Be Like and be sure to subscribe to our show so that you don't miss a single episode um on Cantonese and Hong Kong culture and one housekeeping and one note i want to tell you guys is that i've added a little DM me for comment and feedback um link in the show note or description uh i don't know which one you called it but yeah in the description so um you can click that and it will prompt to your messenger app or a text app and then you can just type in uh your message to me and then i will get it and your support and feedback on the show is so important to me because i need um to know if i'm making the right content for you guys and i will adjust and adapt according to what you tell me so yeah thanks for that um so yeah that's all from me today thanks for listening and see you next time take care bye