Great to be back in Hong Kong. We loved our three weeks in Shanghai last year, and had to come back to China for more. This time to the Southern coastal region of Guangdong: Shunde, Zhuhai and of course - Canton.
But first, a few days in Hong Kong. Tentative plan was to maybe hit a dim sum restaurant somewhere in TST (Tsim Sha Tsui) East. Per usual, we got sidetracked and roamed around gawking and ended up back on Nathan Rd in the Mong Kok vicinity.
So difficult to abstain from ordering more. Dinner with our HK family at their favorite Shatin restaurant. Need to show our friends the proper respect by dutifully eating and gorging!!! Life is tuff!!!
Dinner in Shatin with a dear family friend and her family. Shatin is in the New Territories (NT), which ain’t so new anymore. Woulda been quicker on the MRT (subway), but opted for the iconic dbl-decker 281A bus. Front seats on top, scored!!
A bin of Roast Duck on burners that didn’t get much love, too busy yakking in three dialects (Mandarin, Cantonese and Toisanese) of Chinese and English.
Not sure if you went to Shenzhen – ostensibly not, since it wasn’t mentioned – but it’s a fantastic place to try Chinese food from throughout the country…with its history as an SEZ being the main reason.
Really looking forward to your food adventures there… Already miss the place and desperately looking for excuses to go back…
Plus you’ll be doing the trip I was also thinking about, moving deeper into the province. You’re going by train I assume? Please let us know how convenient it is as a foreigner.
Some Guangzhou inspo, from videos I saved over the past few months.
Leaving HK for Zhuhai this afternoon. Zhuhai is a border town 11km from Macau. Wife chose Zhuhai as our 1st mainland stop, I trust her homework/research totally, confident we’ll have great fun exploring this new town and find some good eats.
Google maps is useless in the PRC, even using a VPN. (LetVPN is now BLOCKED and useless). GOOGLE just has no footprint there. We hired a car to pick us up door Kowloon hotel to door Zhuhai hotel.
We’ll mostly use Didi in China to get around and for intercity moves.
Itinerary for this trip:
Hong Kong —> Zhuhai
Zhuhai —> Foshan (base for Shunde/Kaiping and surrounding)
Foshan—> Guangzhou
Guangzhou —> Hong Kong
As @damiano also found out, hotel rack nights, Didi and Food is very affordable in China. Foreigners like us can comfortably live above our pay grade here.
Our received advice about garoupa is: if priced by weight, larger is better, so be a big spender; that advice received, if not priced by weight, order “the biggest one” in the kitchen.
Yup! Mak’s have gone down hill. Nowadays, they are becoming a tourist trap…over priced and over-rated featuring ho-hum products.
For really great Won-Ton Mien, ’ Shing Kee ’ in Jordan and ‘Ten Noodles’ in Prince Edward are the places to go! Near perfect broth, won-ton morsels, noodles and condiments…cheaper pricing too!
102 House closed in Foshan due to their lease expiry. They’ve opened in Shanghai a few years ago, but from what I hear they’ve been trying to sell the business. One of the partners absconded with some money, and they have been sued by a consultant for the RMB 300k they owe, and apparently recently lost the suit…
not Brussels sprouts but the “baby kailan” that one finds all over Singapore, Thailand… etc. I only recently started seeing them at wet markets in our hood
