Hong Kong or rather the Chinese has a strange phenomenon, the same type of shops are always concentrated in the same place, this is also true for kitchenwares. In a way, it’s convenient and you can practically find everything in 1 go, especially if you need some Chinese tools in Shanghai Street. Even if you don’t need anything, it’s still worth visiting, especially it is situated in the older area of Hong Kong, where you can still find the original style architectures.
A few years ago, I picked up a few stainless cake/tart moulds for baking, they have practically all sizes (and certain items were much cheaper than in France)
Shanghai Street, Yau Ma Tei, Kolwoon
MTR Yau Ma Tei Station Exit C. Walk along Man Ming Lane to Shanghai Street.
The streets around Shanghai St. have become quite familiar to us, enjoy wandering around and inevitably find something new to taste or amusing.
At the end of Shanghai Street, is a wholesale fruit market. Not huge, only about a square block or so in size. Fun to pick up some fruits not always readily available at home. 335 Shanghai st.
Towards the other end at 3 Nelson Street, we stumbled onto a day wet market that was mostly locals. The seafood and fruits were typically HKG, great! We saw trays of mantis prawns for HKG $80 for 10 pcs. Beautiful scallops, crabs, snails, huge geoducks…
The Shanghai st. area is still mostly an industrial area, for the time being. With proximity to Nathan road and Mongkok hurtling upscale, better hurry before its swamped with cookie cutter hipster joints and Mainland tourists.
I bought one of those big round chopping blocks there and carried it home on the bus. Despite following all the best online advice in order to care for it it eventually spilt into two lumps of firewood…!
Not a big loss as it was far too heavy to move around the kitchen. It had been my strategy to address the 80cm countertops in my rental kitchen i.e. lifting up the working area enough not to kill my back. It was a beautiful kitchen but clearly specially designed for the owner.
The other problem of course is that I don’t think I have seen a home with a fireplace in Hong Kong!
I have noticed that some counters in Hong Kong are much lower, though maybe not 80cm low, compared to let’s say U.S. and U.K. It takes a lot of getting used to when I show up in Hong Kong these days.
For the upscale places there are already Langham Place and Cordis in the Mongkok part of Shanghai Street. I enjoyed Mongkok where there were numerous local and wholesale markets (fruits) and there is also the more touristic night market, Temple street, flower market, fish market (for aquarium), jade market all cramped in the same area. I don’t know if “industrial” is the exact word, it is true that there are still a lot of businesses going on, but it is not like any cold industrial zones, but a lot of local are just living there too. Mongkok has a lively spirit and energy that few local areas in HK could compete.
It’s called the “cluster effect”. When sellers of similar goods are geographically concentrated, more business is done because even more buyers come for the convenience of competition among that many more choices and prices. Think Diamond District, Silicon Valley, Auto Row, etc.
It was pretty common in Europe as well. In the middle ages trades (or Guilds) used to cluster together in cities and you often still see this in the historic street or district names.
Its still pretty common across Asia - the best example I have seen was the old part of Hanoi where each street seems to specialise in a particular product.
Amazing shop. I’m afraid to go into this kind of shops… want to buy a bunch of things! Unfortunately I don’t really have space in the house to keep them. Fitting them in my rucksack is also another problem.
Saw many kitchenware shops like this in China as well. Always a joy to check out all the kitchen tools they have in there.
