Hong Kong food and culture: 6 days at the table
If you ask us why Hong Kong is worth a trip rather than a layover, the answer is not the skyline. It is that this is one of the two or three best eating cities on earth, at every price point at once, and that the culture and the food are the same subject here rather than two separate ones.
- Duration
- 6 days
- Pace
- Moderate
- Hotel changes
- 1
- Best months
- Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb
- From
- $1,680 per person
Six days built around meals, with the temples, markets and villages arranged around them rather than the other way round. Two guided eating days, one cooking class, one day out in the New Territories that almost no visitor takes, and three afternoons with nothing in them because you will need them.
Who it suits: people who plan holidays around what they will eat, and returning visitors who did the sights the first time.
Your specialist: Asaf Zamshtein, who runs our China desk, with our Hong Kong partner team on the ground.
A note on who is on the ground. Our own offices are in Japan, Vietnam, India and the Philippines. Hong Kong is not one of them. We run this route through a Hong Kong partner team we have worked with for years, and we would rather name them than imply an office we do not have.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive, Kowloon side. Private transfer. Three nights in Tsim Sha Tsui or Jordan, which puts you inside walking distance of the best cheap eating in the territory.
First dinner is a cha chaan teng, the local diner form: milk tea strong enough to stand a spoon in, macaroni soup, thick toast, and a pineapple bun that contains no pineapple. It is not a novelty and it is not a tourist meal. It is what Hong Kong actually eats.
Day 2: Yum cha, and Sheung Wan. Morning dim sum with a guide, in a proper room: loud, fast, ordered on a paper sheet with a pencil, and finished by half past eleven. Har gow, siu mai, cheung fun, char siu bao, and the two or three things you would never have ordered alone.
Then across to Sheung Wan on foot: the dried seafood streets on Des Voeux Road West with their scallops and abalone and sea cucumber in open sacks, the herbal medicine shops on Ko Shing Street, Man Mo Temple, and the tea merchants who will sit you down for a tasting if you ask properly, which our guide does.
Afternoon free. Evening at a roast meat shop with the geese in the window: goose or char siu over rice, a plate of greens, and change from fifteen dollars.
Day 3: Wet market, then cooking. Early to a working wet market, which is where the entire food culture starts and where almost no visitor goes: live fish, poultry, forty kinds of green vegetable, and a set of rules about how you choose and what you ask that a guide can explain in twenty minutes and you would never work out alone.
Then a private cooking class in a home kitchen, cooking what you bought: wok technique, steaming, and the sauces. Lunch is what you made.
Afternoon free. Evening at Temple Street after eight, for the clay pot rice and the seafood stalls rather than the shopping, which is thin.
Day 4: The New Territories. The day that changes people’s picture of Hong Kong. Out by rail and car to the walled villages of the Ping Shan and Lung Yeuk Tau heritage trails, where clan settlements with ancestral halls and study halls have been standing since the Ming dynasty and are still lived in.
Lunch at Tai Po market, which is the best inland market in the territory. Afternoon at a poon choi lunch or a tea house, depending on your dates and the season.
Move hotels in the evening to the island side for the last two nights.
Day 5: Lantau, monastery food, and the sea. Ferry to Lantau. Vegetarian lunch at Po Lin monastery, which is a genuine Buddhist temple kitchen rather than a restaurant with a theme, and one of the most interesting meals of the week. Afternoon at Tai O, the stilt village, where the shrimp paste and salted fish that flavour half of Cantonese cooking are still made.
Evening back on the island: seafood at Lei Yue Mun or Sai Kung, picked from the tank, priced by weight, agreed before it goes to the kitchen.
Day 6: One last market, then departure. Sham Shui Po before nine: the fabric and hardware streets, the dried goods, and the noodle shops that have been there for fifty years. Then the airport.
What is included
Accommodation with breakfast in two hotels, private transfers, a licensed English-speaking food guide for two full days, a private cooking class with market shopping and lunch, restaurant reservations where they are taken and realistic queue timings where they are not, a tea tasting, the New Territories day with car and guide, all ferry crossings, Octopus cards, a day-by-day document with what to order at every stop written in English and Chinese, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our Hong Kong partner team.
What we would change, and when
- Vegetarian or vegan? Entirely workable here, more so than in most of the region, because of the Buddhist vegetarian tradition. We rebuild the market and roast meat days around temple kitchens, the vegetarian dim sum rooms and the Chiu Chow vegetable dishes. Note that oyster sauce, dried shrimp and pork stock hide in more dishes than a menu admits, and we brief every restaurant in Cantonese in advance.
- Travelling in the two weeks around Chinese New Year? Many family-run restaurants close for several days and the good rooms book out. We plan the week deliberately around it, and the festival food is worth the disruption.
- Eight days? Add two nights in Macau, which has a food culture of its own that is neither Chinese nor Portuguese.
- Summer dates? Markets at seven in the morning, everything else indoors and air-conditioned, and we say plainly that June to September is not the season we would pick.
Honest notes
The famous cheap restaurants now have queues that can run to an hour. Some are worth it and most are not. Our document tells you which, with a realistic wait time and an equally good alternative two streets away.
Lunch at a serious restaurant costs a fraction of dinner and is frequently the same kitchen. We use that deliberately.
Dim sum is a morning and lunchtime meal. A dim sum dinner is a tourist construction and the good rooms have stopped serving by mid-afternoon.
Dietary requirements are workable and need to be told to us early rather than mentioned on arrival. Language is the barrier, not willingness, and that is what the partner team is for.
Built by Asaf Zamshtein, who runs our China desk, and checked with our Hong Kong partner team before it goes out.
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