the intro and the outro so we filmed this on my crappy phone i swear the quality gets way better after this hey ho it's virginia virginia chan from human for the chance of fishbowl this video is going to be on the top 10 local favorites oh and i have a caveat i know i have so many caveats that i probably should be a lawyer but my caveat is that we locals will have a different flavor and texture profile and preference to you so some of these dishes you might love it or you may hate it it Brisket noodles. Why gao ge? Well, it's one of the oldest restaurants in town.
It has like 90 years of history. But another thing is, it has a lot of celebrity hype around it. Beef noodles are pretty common, right? Like the Taiwanese beef noodles, and then there's the Vietnamese pho beef noodles.
But in Hong Kong, we always specifically call it the beef brisket noodles. So we use the beef brisket. And it might include the tendon as well.
Beef brisket is the lower chest of the cow, a working muscle that requires a lot of long cooking time to make sure it is. is super super tender and not chewy. At GiaoGai specifically, they are most famous for their curry beef brisket broth with Yi Min or Yi Fu noodles, which is a Cantonese egg noodle made with wheat flour. I would say this, if you are looking to taste the true essence of beef brisket, get it in the clear soup. But if you like stronger flavors, then go for the curry, but the curry will slightly overpower the true flavors of the beef brisket, in my opinion.
This layer here gives it a really nice bite and it's super tender inside. And with clear soup, you can definitely taste the sweetness of that beef brisket. It's so yummy.
So why San Hanyuan? Because their French toast is consistently ranked as one of the top in the city. Look, you can hear it sizzling. It's like freshly made hong doug bing, red bean ice. These were made popular during the bing si era.
and they sold frozen cold drinks that had ice in it. We love using red bean in desserts and a lot of sweet things. So they boil the red bean with sugar to make it into like a red bean paste. It's ready to go. When you order the drink, they just like put in in the red bean paste and then on top is evaporated milk and ice.
Now I will say this is kind of an indulgence because it is going to be quite sweet. They give a lot of red bean which is what we love. I don't necessarily care for the drink itself, I just really like the red bean. Sai to si, Hong Kong style French toast will usually consist of two pieces of bread inside. They might put in a peanut butter or a coconut jam and then they will of course drench the bread in egg and deep fry.
it. It is glorious but also once again very decadent. Back in the day syrup was an imported good so it's really expensive so what they decided to do was put in the kaya which is a coconut jam inside in the middle and so when you deep fry it, that coconut jam will melt and so it will make everything super sweet and yummy so you wouldn't need the syrup. For us, French toast is not actually a breakfast item, it's actually more of an afternoon tea so it's meant for a good mid-afternoon quick.
Pick me up. I like it with a lot of syrup. It's like light, airy and fluffy. I know it's deep fried but it doesn't taste oily at all.
It's so good. Bo Zai Fan Clay Pot Rice. So why Kun Gai?
Because they're probably the most famous place in Hong Kong for clay pot rice. And then on top of that, the Michelin gave them a recommendation. So they're busy on top of busy, basically.
After you order the dish, it takes about... 30 minutes to 40 minutes because they're cooking the rice from scratch. Patience is a key virtue here. And the best part about claypot rice is the rice could be at the bottom of the pot.
You have too high heat and it burns the bottom without cooking the rice. And then if it's too low heat, the whole thing doesn't cook through. So it definitely requires a lot of technique to get this right. Oh, oh, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Hold up, I gotta wash the dishes first so she's gonna take away my pot.
I'll be right back. Hi! The 2G toppings that you can pick when you do claypot rice is the beef or the chicken is pretty good. And then you can add in lap cheung, which is the Chinese sausage, and that's pretty yummy. When you cook the rice and the toppings together, the rice will have the essence and the fragrance of the toppings.
There are a lot of different schools of thoughts on how to get the crispy bottom so listen to your waitstaff when your clay pot rice comes to the table. My general advice would be if they don't give you any is to open up the lid and then pour in the soy sauce mix it all without scraping the bottom. of the pot and then close the lid again to let it like soak in or steam a little bit and then you can open and Then scrape and eat and enjoy now the soy sauce is a dark sweet soy So don't worry about it being too salty because it won't be but it just adds flavor and color Thank you. All right, time to eat Hello. Hello.
Hello. Two people. OK.
Satay instant noodle. So why Wingi? Well, I think it's a really good feel-good story. They opened in 1994, and in 2016, it's now operated by their second generation.
He's the one that started combining traditional elements with a little bit more creativity. So as you can see, this is definitely an upgrade or a premium satay instant noodles. First, it's actually cooked in this clay hot pot, and then the satay sauce they use is actually from a local, like, famous sauce company. And he actually reached out to that company and made and invented the soup base together. They call it the expresso of the satay world.
Oh my god, all the noodles have that saute taste to it. It's so yummy and creamy and a little bit like peanut buttery. Here's your pho. rice roll it literally translates to pig intestine so i guess it's used to describe the appearance of the noodles and don't worry there's no pig intestine in it so why here well it said that they sell about 50 000 of these rice rolls a day and they are specialized in these rice rolls we eat it for a quick snack and it is plain so it is pretty vanilla unless you add in the sauce it's gonna be a trio of sauces that make it really yummy so soy sauce a sesame and then we have the sweet hoisin sauce, and then we top it with sesame seeds.
Rice rolls are actually just made with rice flour, tapioca, or glutinous rice flour. Let me tuck one in. Remember to give it a good mix. Mm, they're super slippery.
Now, as a kid, what I used to do is I used to unravel it, so there was a lot more surface area for the sauce, but as an adult, I just slip it up. Mmm! Tofu pho!
Tofu pudding! Why Gong Wo? Well, for one, I really like their tofu.
It is actually very, very silky. And if I'm ending a tour here, I often buy a couple cubes of tofu to... bring home to their tofu pudding is pretty darn good it's very silky and it's very smooth and it has a very subtle but very aromatic and fragrant like tofu flavor in Hong Kong we like our tofu pudding to be sweet you can have it it hot or cold but I got it hot today. I just really like the flavour of tofu.
I would suggest you getting the whole tofu pudding and then having quite a bit of sugar on top because the tofu pudding itself isn't that sweet. So then I gotta press the button. That was probably the highlight of my day.
Ha ha ha! Chae Jai Min Cart Noodles! Why Mungay? Well, as you can tell, they're pretty famous.
They've got four shops. Four shops on one street. It's my first rodeo here.
I usually go to... traditional store, so I never realized they had a conveyor belt here. And also you could tick tick tick and it has a little bit of English at the front on the machine, but you do have to pay with your octopus. This is a choose your own adventure bowl of noodles. And the toppings are that we got was the radish, the fish maw, chicken wings, and beef brisket.
Back in the day, they actually had mobile food cart license, so you were allowed to sell things on the street. You just need a cart, you add a ton of toppings, add a ton of different noodles, add hot soup, and bam, you've got a really good thriving business. The only thing was, a lot of people did it illegally. In terms of the noodles, I actually would say go for the oil noodles first, it's the egg noodle, and it's the local favorite that they use to pair with the cart noodles. I could eat this every day.
Let's try the brisket. Mmm, really soft. Tong Yuan Glutinous Rice Dumplings.
Why gai gai? Well, we call it zhanchuai shi li, which means that they're not skipping out on the actual ingredients and the quality of ingredients. Cantonese desserts are meant to be like nutritious and good for you and they're usually... hot and soupy. Unfortunately for a lot of you, I think your first experience with Hong Kong desserts is actually the red bean soup because it's free at a lot of the Chinese restaurants and it probably isn't the best dessert to start you on.
Inside these glutinous rice dumplings is black bean. sesame. We believe that if you eat enough black sesame it will make our hair blacker. My grandma swears by it. And on the outside it's more like a mochi skin so it's quite chewy.
The soup broth here is actually ginger. Hongyun sounds a lot like tuiyun which means like reunification of the family. Therefore this is dessert that we have to have during mid-autumn festival, Chinese New Year's and winter solstice because we want the family to come together wholesome and entire for every single year.
The black sesame is quite fragrant and you can kind of taste a little bit of the grittiness Super good Tzitiu Chao Hin Clams and black bean sauce Now this is one of the most famous and popular dishes to order at a dai pai dong and it's also one of the tastiest I would think you can get clams and black bean sauce in any like stir-fried restaurant But definitely try it at a dai pai dong because you're getting like the authentic experience. So why Oima-san? That's because this is an authentic daipaigong restaurant. So we're outside and right behind me is the kitchen. That's where my clams were made.
Oh, and a quick tip. These clams are all opened when they're cooked, but if they were dead before they cooked it, they were being closed. So in order to not get sick, remember, eat only the clams that are opened. Anything that's like glued shut, don't eat it.
Mmm, they're so good and you know what? The clam shell is a vessel for getting floss.