"You are living a fantasy "
Aren’t we all…
Hi Claus,
We go way back, so I know you mean well but you can have stubborn opinions! 
I very much appreciate your quest to become the best chef you can be.
Your (initial) post is a little bit confusing because you mention street food in the title, but the only poor experience you’ve had was in a 2 star Michelin place? Did the chef who cooked the steak in a wok, serve the steak to you as it was? No other ingredients? Sometimes when a chef knows he will add ingredients later, he might not clean the wok, because all the flavours still end up on the same plate. If that wasn’t the case here, you’ve probably visited a poor restaurant, Michelin or not.
In fact, in general I’d advise against eating at Michelin starred places in Asia, if you want to get the best food. They often westernise the flavours to appeal to Westerners. Or just go to a proper French restaurant in HK or Singapore.
Thinking out loud, there are typically four types of places I encounter in Asia, and with a rare exception, they are all clean and hygienic.
1st type: actual streetfood, like motorised carts in Thailand. Here I love to eat bbq grilled chicken, Thai papaya salad, and pad thai noodles. They won’t have running water, but they will usually have a bucket or tank of clean water.
2nd type: the low key places where you can get food ranging from good to superb. From restaurants in malls to hawker centres and everything inbetween, and always with running water arounf.
One of the national dishes in Singapore is fried hokkien mee, a noodle dish where the noodles are braised in prawn stock, fried in pork lard, and served with pork, squid and fresh prawns. This is a dish that can be had for 5-6 euro, and it’s superb - it’s food that can bring tears to my eyes, seeing so much chef’s skills and tasting outstanding multifaceted flavours. See eg http://ieatishootipost.sg/geylang-lor-29-charcoal-fried-hokkien-mee-passing-baton/ And of course in Thailand the famous Jay Fai: https://youtu.be/02KR-LkpH4s
3rd type: these are the traditional, local, high end restaurants. Sometimes in hotels, but also just local places. More grandeur, exquisite often centuries’ old cooking techniques and superb flavours. You have a bunch of them in Hong Kong. Some have Michelin stars, but again having a star is not a well-correlated criterium for great food.
4rd type: these are the places where they cater more for westerners, either by numbing down the flavours or some fusion idea. These are the places I hope to avoid. And again, lots of Michelin stars here as well.
To finish my overly long post, a few random thoughts. I’ve only been sick because of food poisoning once while in Asia, in an Indian restaurant in a very touristy part of Siem Raep Cambodia. I don’t get sick often, maybe once in 5-7 years, but actually the last time was 2 days ago - some mild food poisoning from a sandwich in the uber wealthy 6th arrondissement of Paris.
I don’t have any dietary restrictions. Last week in France I’ve eaten foie gras, raw meat, raw fish, snails, duck liver. There is one thing I am a little afraid of eating in France and that is andouille in these small local village restaurants… Maybe I should try! In Asia people usually also don’t have dietary restrictions, so coming there and asking for omitting prawns or seafood flavours, would be the equivalent of going to a Michelin starred place in Paris and saying you don’t eat eggs and hence won’t eat any hollandaise sauce. it’s just very uncommon.
Next time you’re in Thailand just ask your family to bring you to places they love. See if that changes your mind!
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I think you meant andouillette. Andouille is nothing to be afraid of. Two completely different things though both are sausage.
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Sounds like Denmark to me.
??? " In fact, in general I’d advise against eating at Michelin starred places in Asia, if you want to get the best food ."
Some of my favourite and tastiest places I have eaten are all Michelin restaurants located in Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Tokyo…etc
eg., The Chairman, DEN, Otto e Mezzo, Caprice, Candlenut, Lung King Heen, Ming Court…to name a few!
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Not at all.
Denmark has handed out citizenships for decades to - if you ask me - the wrong people.
Only during the last few years this has now slowed down quite a bit.
But in Thailand it’s next to impossible to obtain a Thai citizenship, they really try to protect their country.
I will refrain from talking politics on this forum, because this will 100% get me into trouble as a default.
Seriously, Singapore has some absolutely stunning Michelin-starred restaurants!
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You’re going to refrain from politics, AFTER throwing out your right wing xenophobic dig? Brilliant.
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Hi Damiano,
Good to see you on the forum 
My original first post in this thread was honestly just a post I made, because I saw some videos of street food cooks, who was highly praised in the Youtube comment section for their skills with a wok and for their cooking technique.
I was not impressed at all, and certainly not over the way they seemed to prepare huge batches of deep fried prawns and then continued to prepare huge batches of deep fried sausages using the same oil.
This made me wonder why I’m not such a huge fan of the street food places I’ve tried in Thailand, Vietnam and Europe. Even some of the Chinese and Thai restaurants also served me quite disappointing dishes, that somehow tasted a bit off to my tastebuds.
I felt I got this fishy taste in all I ate, no matter what I ordered.
Yes, they add fish sauce and oyster sauce to pretty much all noodle dishes, but these type sauces give me more of an umami taste, not a fishy seafood taste. The oyster sauce and fish sauce are more there to balance the taste, not to make it taste of fish or seafood in my view.
Then I saw these youtube videos and saw how they would not only use the same wok for many different types of ingredients, but also reuse the oil they deep fried in for different types of ingredients - and a bell rang and I said to myself: ‘Hey, now I know why my pork unintentionally tastes slightly of prawns, my chicken sometimes has this off flavour of seafood’
And I was never talking about the asian dishes, where you intentionally mix seafood and pork or other types of meat.
I wasn’t expressing myself clearly enough about that.
I know very well you have dishes where you intentionally mix fish and meat together.
You are also correct, that fish sauce and oyster sauce and seafood in general are so commonly used in asian cuisine, that you have to expect most dishes will contain some type of oyster and fish sauce, but I rarely find these sauces overpowering. They are more there to balance the flavours in a dish in my opinion.
The street food trucks I are from in Bangkok was recommended to by my wifes family, and most of the dishes I got were very well made - just had this funny taste in the background many of the dishes and I think this could be from using the woks for different type of dishes and not cleaning the woks properly between making the different dishes.
I do realize, that it’s impossible to have 5-6 different woks going at the same time in a little food truck for the different type dishes they make - but I still stand by my opinion, that if you serve food and charge money for it, even though it may be a very cheap price you charge, you still have to at least treat your customers with proper respect.
People arguing in this thread, that I don’t know anything about other cultures shoot past the board, because culture should not have to do with charging money for food, whether it’s served from a little food truck or from a bigger restaurant, and not caring about unintentionally contaminating unwanted flavours into different type dishes.
If I order a chow mein with chicken, I don’t expect the dish to have a funny taste of squid, because the person who made the dish cooked it in a wok used moments earlier to cook squid in. Culture has nothing to with this. I’ll repeat it all day long.
I know a bunch of pro chefs, and they would never cook a RibEye steak in a pan they moments earlier used to sear scallops in (unless they intentionally want to infuse their RibEye steak with the taste of quick seared scallops).
It’s not a cultural thing, it’s simply unprofessional behaviour.
Unprofessional behaviour has nothing to do with culture.
Next time I’ll visit Asia, I’m going to Japan for 3-4 weeks wth my wife.
Japanse culture has always intriqued me. I like their strive for perfectionism and I appeciate how polite they always seem to be.
I’ll visit a bunch of teppanyaki restaurants, as I enjoy the show they put on and the quality of food they serve. I’ll keep an open eye to whether or not they clean the plancha between servings 
Cheers, Claus
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I don’t belive my reply was written to you, yet you could not hold back and just HAD to once again spew your opinion out on the forum. Brilliant X 2
Please place me in your ignore filter - you’re definitely going in to mine.
I guess we just have different preferences in terms of food and restaurants.
When I first went to Ming Court they had no stars, and the food was excellent. This was over a decade ago. Subsequent visits, when they had received Michelin recognition, the food was still good.
But I’ve had so many great meals in HK, from 5 euro hole-in-the-wall char siu rice places to dai pai dongs in Central, and of course the numerous places where you can pick your own live fish. They were all great meals, and in no way did I find the food at Ming Court to be ‘better’ - just different.
Another place: Din Tai Fung. Went there first (Causeway Bay) when they had no star. Yes, the xialongbao is wonderful, but their other dishes are not that special. Have also been to the Singapore branche - again nothing special.
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I don’t think the Ding Tai Fung in Scarborough,
Canada are officially owned by the Ding Tai Fung in Hong Kong or Singapore.
The DTF in Canada are fine for XLB, but they’re definitely not Michelin Star level.
They’re garden variety Chinese restaurant in the burbs level, around a 4 to 4.6 rating on Yelp or Google review. 
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Ref: Ming Court
Sadly both Chef Tangs ( brothers ) who put Ming Court on the Michelin star map have moved on! One passed away ( Mango ) whilst the younger brother left for a restaurant on the HK island side.
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