Food

We are discussing living somewhere else for the next month but I have to admit—I want to stay in this area because I have discovered where a lot of the good hole in the wall restaurants are.
From now on I will use the abbreviation HITW (Hole-in-the-wall). Being unable to read Chinese, I have no idea what the names of these restaurants are, so I have listed them by the food I regularly order. All of these places are less than a 2 minute walk away—in fact most of them are just across the street.
Prices, as you can see, are insanely cheap—they are listed in Hong Kong dollars, and the exchange rate is US$1 to HK$7.8


Hainan chicken breast rice with vegetable $15
BBQ crispy pork and vegetables on rice: $15
Char Siu and vegetables on rice $15I eat here most often because you can get skinless chicken breast rice for $15 here, and it’s absolutely delicious. If you eat in, you can play count-the cockroaches. As a result we now always get our food to go. The men who work here are legends in my mind. There’s the chef, who is the most disgusting of creatures—he has a large potbelly, is always sweaty, oily and shirtless, has only one visible brown splotchy tooth that looks as if it’s going to fall off, huge scabs on his arms, and you’re lucky if you come in and he isn’t scratching either the scabs or his head with his bare hands. He always tries to talk to me in a loud booming voice but he slurs and it takes me awhile to understand what he is saying. Once, we were eating inside and he inexplicably came out of the back door (2 feet behind our table) shirtless and rubbing his wet head with a towel like he had just come out of the shower, and then stood in the middle of the room and continued to dry his hair. I can’t complain though because he makes some of the best chicken I’ve ever tasted.
The guy who chops the meats (the butcher?) is really nice but rarely talks. When the chef isn’t looking, the butcher points at him and makes “he’s crazy” loopies around his ears at me.
There’s another guy who stands at the door sometimes. I think he’s the butcher’s brother. He and I sometimes make small talk—he is very friendly and will give me and my friends a discount if we order at night (food is usually more expensive at night).
I think the people who work this store live upstairs, so the store is s sort of living room for them. An assortment of relatives and friends are always over watching TV or shouting over their gambling losses. I’m going to miss this place.


Meatball noodle soup $11Meatballs: Fish, beef, fish with green onion, pork with mushrooms
Fresh Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce: $6
All of the workers here are women. All but one of them think I’m crazy. This is because one night, after I had been drinking, I felt like some soup noodles and ambled across the street to their shop. The lady who doesn’t think I’m crazy suggested I have gong yuen, and I understood that it was a meatball so I agreed. I went back to the hotel and discovered it was the most delicious meatball I had ever tasted (pork with salty mushrooms inside), but since I was buzzed when I ordered it, I forgot what they were called. For the next two weeks, I would walk in and order meatball noodle soup, and each time they would give me a different kind. They were all delicious but I was searching for the elusive kind I had that night. I kept describing it to them, but I described it as a beef meatball with vegetables inside instead of pork meatball, so they told me time and again that they didn’t sell this. I must have asked the same lady four times, and each time she would say “um, you were here yesterday trying to order the same thing. Let me repeat: we don’t have it.” Finally one day last week I ran into the same lady who gave them to me the first time, and she said “Oh, you must mean this” and gave me the right kind of meatball. I think I caught at least one of her coworkers suppressing a giggle.

Sliced goose (boneless) on rice with vegetables $30 (add $5 for goose gizzard)
Across the street from the hotel. The family here is very nice, and the cook says that this HITW is famous in the neighborhood for its goose. They always make conversation with me. This is the family that gave me food from their dinner table.

Wonton noodle with side of fried pork chop: $15
Six fried dumplings: $11
Mango in cream with sago: $9
Mango with black sticky rice: $18
Meat dumpling in fried bread: $2 each
Pork and Thousand year old egg congee: $10
Rice ball with shredded chicken inside: $7We call this place “that amazingly good restaurant” because, well, it is. The ladies there are dismissive and rude and look at us like we’re total foreigners and always greet us with “what do you want??” repeated every 30 seconds when we are trying to decide, which is completely excusable given the surpassing quality and price of the food. About 5 people max can fit, really cramped, into their eating space, so we usually get food to go. Their pan-fried dumplings are divine, and for $15 you can get a huge bowl of wonton noodles with vegetables and a side of fried battered spicy-salt pork chops.

Ham, egg and cheese sandwich $10My breakfast place, since it’s on the way to school and their eggs are tasty.

McDonald’sIt’ s notable that the ice cream cone is $2. I’ve only tried ice cream here, because with all of the great food around, who wants to eat at McDonalds? I do, however, want to try these interesting-looking menu items before I leave:
Salmon nuggets
Pork nuggets
Corn Pie
Red Bean Pie
Mc Kroket (haha, just kidding)