TRIP + PLATE + 365 days
Wellington Street in Central has a particular quality in the early evening — the office workers have largely dispersed, the tourist crowds haven’t yet arrived for the Soho dinner rush, and the street settles into a brief calm between its two busiest periods. It was in this window that I found Tsim Chai Kee: a … Read more
Some food reputations are built on nostalgia and maintained by inertia — the famous restaurant that was once excellent and now coasts on its name. Tai Cheong Bakery is not that. I visited in the evening, stopping after dinner at Tsim Chai Kee nearby, and found an egg tart that justified every word written about … Read more
There are two ways to approach a beloved traditional food. The first is to replicate it faithfully — to honor the form and the recipe that have worked for decades. The second is to understand what makes it good and apply better technique to achieve a more refined version of the same thing. Bakehouse chose … Read more
The final morning of a Hong Kong trip has a particular quality — the awareness that you’re eating your last meal in the city before a long return journey, the desire to end on something that captures what the visit has been. I chose Lan Fong Yuen on the morning of January, walking from the … Read more
The Australian Dairy Company queue starts before you see the restaurant. Walking along Parkes Street in Jordan on the morning of January 25th — my second day in Hong Kong, early enough that the streets were still quiet — I found the line before I found the sign. A dozen people on the pavement outside … Read more
Lin Heung Tea House is not the best dim sum in Hong Kong. It might not even be in the top five by any objective measure of food quality. What it is — and what no other dim sum restaurant in the city can claim to the same degree — is the most authentic surviving … Read more
There is a version of dim sum in Hong Kong that exists primarily for tourists — hotel restaurants with English menus, tableside explanations of each dish, and prices that reflect the convenience of not having to find the real thing. One Dim Sum is emphatically not that version. I visited the Prince Edward location on … Read more
The AKVO Hotel sits in Central — not on the harbor waterfront, not in the financial district proper, but in the neighborhood’s more interesting middle layer: close enough to the Mid-Levels Escalator to walk to Soho in minutes, close enough to the Star Ferry pier to reach the harbor on foot, and positioned in the … Read more
There are hotels in Hong Kong with better rooms, more impressive lobbies, and considerably higher price tags. There are very few hotels in Hong Kong with a better location than the YMCA Salisbury — and in a city where location is the single most important factor in the quality of the stay, that distinction matters … Read more
Choosing where to stay in Hong Kong is one of the most consequential decisions of the trip — the city’s geography means that your base determines how you experience everything else. Stay in Tsim Sha Tsui and Hong Kong Island is a harbor crossing away; stay in Central and Kowloon requires the same crossing in … Read more