Breakfast in Hong Kong

My time in Hong Kong began almost 20 years ago, but there were no blogs then (although there were mailing lists).

So here is the entry I wanted to make then about eating breakfast there, compared to doing it here.

First all, here, in Canada, breakfast for me for the past 30 years has been cereal + milk. The cereal is Raisin Bran, either Kellogg's or Post.

First of all, if you go to Hong Kong, you discover that Canadian (or American) style breakfast cereal is not common, and an expensive type of breakfast.

Some points to consider

• Supermarkets exist, but 7-11 stores are the usual place to buy food. 7-11 stores in Hong Kong are different from the ones in Vancouver in numerous ways: they sell liquor, everything from beer to Hennesey cognac.
• As in 7-11 stores here, space is at a premium, and so they sell very small sizes
• Perhaps 4 or 5 American cereals are readily available at 7-11's, all small, all at premium prices
• The familiar waxed paper containers inside are not used -- aluminum is used instead (the tropical humid climate)
• milk is expensive

When I say that milk is expensive, it's not exactly that expensive if you don't mind Kowloon Dairy, and the very small (about 1 imperial pint) glass bottles it comes in. In other words you need a bottle for every bowl of cereal. In addition if you don't live in Central, or another region frequented by ex-pats, the milk may close to the best-before date.

Finally, Kowloon Dairy's milk is not to the taste of the average Canadian or American. If you want that, you have two alternatives: Trappist Dairy, and imported UHT milk from New Zealand. The latter is undoutedly the best. It comes in room-temperature tetrapak from NZ and has a shelf life of 1 year -- but it's 2 or 3 times the price of Trappist milk, itself more expensive (and less readily available) than Kowloon Dairy.

All right, you quickly get the message -- if you want to have breakfast easily in Hong Kong, cereal + milk is not the norm. So what is?

Well, pastries of various kinds are widely available for sale by neighbourhood bakeries. These same types of pastries are available from places like Amy's Cake House here in Vancouver and other Chinese places. But Amy's has only a few locations -- in HK -- places like that are everywhere. So basically in HK it's very common to buy your breakfast -- not a restaurant -- but a bakery. In HK I lived in a seaside place known as Lido Garden, and it had a bank, Park N' Shop (now a 7-11), Bank, video store, and of course the bakery. This doesn't count a bunch of other businesses on the other (north) side of Castle Peak Road.

This of course is the habit of a single person.

Other people would prepare something in a wok.

OK -- where do you get something for a wok -- especially meat since frozen meat Canadian style is not that common? The short answer is a market -- not like a 7-11 at all -- but more like Granville Island Public Market -- to use Vancouver terms -- where you can buy individual oranges and strips of meat (beef, pork, chicken). Actually there is one type of frozen meat commonly sold there -- NZ frozen lamb in those vacuum packages. Anyway, I digress.

A family breakfast over there -- which I didn't have since I was single --- would typically consist of some kind of soup with leftovers from the previous day's evening meal -- many things common here like wieners, eggs, and things less common here like noodles.

However, all of the above impractical for the single person -- with one exception --- prepackaged noodles/soup. These are sold in many forms and with different qualities from almost worthless to rather nice.