The food: Seafood Claypot with Beancurd and Bok Choy
Where to find it: Temple Spice Crabs, Temple Street, Hong Kong
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Hong Kong buzzes and barrels down upon every wee human treading its shores. “Asia’s world city” overcasts a man in its film-noir fog and claustrophobia-inducing mountain range. The city overwhelms senses and sensibility. Its nightly “Symphony of Lights” skyscraper light show alone casts magical spells upon glassy-eyed spectators to the point of benign, psychedelic delight.
Hong Kong is big, it’s bright, and from Tex Mex to Thai, it provides typhoons of flavors and foreign diversions. Seriously, at one point when my film crew and I took a break from production to shimmy down to a local bar, we stumbled into a frat-Fest beer room complete with topless, white dudes (most likely investment bankers on assignment from New York) trying to score with giggling Asian boppers1. I forgot I was sipping a beer in Asia and lost myself in Greektastic hot flashes of my fraternity years at UCLA: aka “University of Caucasians Lost among Asians.”
Multi-cultural Hong Kong can have that cultural-warping effect. A European-inspired restaurant might rival a dim sum house for Michelin Guide rankings.
However, like most extremes of poison and pleasure there exists an antidote to the cultural drug cocktail mixing in Hong Kong. The city hides within its dizzying city mountaintops city parks and traditional Chinese Buddhist temples that bring peace to a hurried, urban soul—Chinese cultural oases like the Kowloon Walled City Park.
In this city, native Hong Kongers can enjoy modest, Asian dishes like this seafood Claypot even amongst the “Roulex authentic watch” peddlers of Hong Kong’s Temple street market. When a local dips their zhongshi tangchi spoons into the thick broth, nostalgia awakens. Time warps to a scene that comforts Hong Kong locals; a time when their loving mothers warmed their souls with a toasty bowl of fish soup as rain drizzled a chill soundtrack outside. Even amongst the foreign forces of fusion invading Hong Kong, the people search deep within its harbor (its soul?) and catch seafood that transports locals back to its roots. Hong Kong will never grow too big to forget its Chinese roots.
This #FoodFriday, enjoy the best—a reassuring plate that hearkens back to home.
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1 JOB OPPORTUNITY: The above picture comes straight out of another scene from my travel & food web series I’m filming in Asia. Longa Travels Productions is currently seeking (documentary/trailer) editors for post-production. If you’re interested in learning more, then please send an email to [email protected] asking that you’d like to learn more.