December 23, 2005

Fish Porridge and Wanton Mee





These two shops in Hong Kong specialize in fish porridge though they also sell beef and pork porridges as well as ‘see yau lor mee’, ‘fun cheong’, ‘yau char kuai’ etc. They have porridge with fish mouth, fish bone, fish slices and other parts of the fish…. I prefer the yu larm chook. I like the thick chunks of fish that come with the porridge.

If you want plain porridge (but chook in cantonese), you must tell them not to add anything. Otherwise they will give you porridge with salt, monosodium glutamate and whatever spices they normally use.

The eateries are in the Jordan area; one is in Ning Po Street and one is in Woosung Street. There is another one in Woosung Street. All three are within one minute’s walk from each other.

I would say ‘wanton mee’ is the most common hawker food in Hong Kong. I read about one wanton mee shop in Leonard’s blog (http://leonardpng.blogspot.com) and decided to try it. It is in Hau Fook Street in Tsim Sha Tsui. The mee came with big shrimp-filled wantons. There were no char siew. I think they only have the soup version, not the dried version. The wantons were good but not outstanding. I also tried their octopus balls (mak yu yuen in Cantonese). I think they were better than the wantons.

I think we in Singapore have a wider variety of food. It is difficult to find char kuay teow, laksa, prawn mee, fish-head meehoon or mee rubus in Hong Kong. Our chicken rice tastes better too. I also prefer our wanton mee to Hong Kong’s.


2 comments:

Lam Chun See said...

I also savoured many nice makans in Ipoh but unfortunately did not take any photos.

Victor said...

I see that you are quite a foodie too Frannxis. Quite an insightful post. I remember you mentioning that the Hong Kong people always seemed to be in a hurry going somewhere. It was like that too when I last visited Hong Kong some 2 decades ago although the place might have changed somewhat in other ways.