TRIP + PLATE + 365 days
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
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