TRIP + PLATE + 365 days
Buying souvenirs in Hong Kong is easier than in most cities — the range is enormous, the prices are competitive, and the city has several items that are genuinely specific to Hong Kong rather than the generic tourist merchandise available everywhere. I bought my main souvenirs on the final morning of my January trip, stopping … Read more
Hong Kong has one of the most developed Korean food scenes outside Korea itself — a reflection of the city’s large Korean expatriate community, its proximity to Korea, and the global wave of interest in Korean cuisine that has accelerated over the past decade. I ate Korean food on three separate occasions during my January … Read more
Hong Kong takes its wonton noodles seriously. Not in the way that tourists are told to take things seriously — not because it’s on a list or because a celebrity chef mentioned it — but in the way that a city takes seriously the thing it has been eating every day for a century. The … Read more
Hong Kong’s egg tart is one of the city’s most beloved food objects — a pastry that exists in a specific form nowhere else in the world, the product of a particular local history and a particular local taste. I ate egg tarts at two of Hong Kong’s most celebrated establishments during my January trip: … Read more
There is no more Hong Kong institution than the cha chaan teng. Not the harbor view, not the night market, not even the dim sum — the cha chaan teng is where Hong Kong actually lives, every morning, every afternoon, and late into the evening. I visited three of the city’s most celebrated examples during … Read more
Most Hong Kong itineraries are built around the harbor view, the Peak, and the temple circuit. The Mong Kok Flower Market and Bird Garden belong to a different category — experiences that have nothing to do with the tourist circuit and everything to do with how the city actually lives. I visited on the afternoon … Read more
The Hong Kong Museum of Art sits on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront in a position that most museums would envy — directly on Victoria Harbour, adjacent to the Cultural Centre, with the Hong Kong Island skyline visible across the water from its upper floors. I visited on the second morning of my January trip, … Read more
Temple Street arrives in layers. The first thing you notice is the smell — grilled meats and incense mixing in the narrow lanes before you’ve seen a single stall. Then the noise — vendors calling, Cantonese opera from somewhere deeper in the market, the general compression of sound that a covered street market at full … Read more
There are things you think you know about Hong Kong before you visit, and Victoria Peak at night is one of them. The photographs are everywhere — the illuminated skyline spread below, the harbor reflecting the tower lights, the density of the city visible from above in a way that makes it look almost unreal. … Read more
There are places in Hong Kong that look exactly like their photographs, and places that don’t. The Monster Building Hong Kong is emphatically the latter — not because the photographs are dishonest, but because the scale of what you see when you walk into the inner courtyard and look up simply doesn’t translate to a … Read more