Inside Jeremy Pang's Hong Kong Kitchen
Chef Jeremy Pang knows all the best places to find the authentic flavours of Hong Kong.
Feeding chicken’s feet and so-called thousand-year-old eggs to famous people might sound more like a bushtucker trial on I’m a Celebrity... than a travelogue-cum-cookery show, but they’re all on the menu in Jeremy Pang’s Hong Kong Kitchen, new on ITVX this week.
The six-part series features Pang taking his guests – from TV presenter Mel Giedroyc to chef Simon Rimmer – on a foodie adventure amid the flavour-saturated streets of Hong Kong.
Pang – familiar to viewers from appearances on Ready Steady Cook, Saturday Kitchen and his own show, Jeremy Pang’s Asian Kitchen – hails from three generations of Chinese chefs, so he certainly knows his way round a wok.
So, where does he eat in Hong Kong himself, and how can visitors ensure that their trip is truly delicious?
Touch down and tuck in
“Flights into Hong Kong usually land quite early in the morning, so I drop my luggage off with the hotel concierge then go straight to a roast meats place until my room is ready. You can just Google 'roast meats central Hong Kong' and they’ll all be pretty good, because it’s a real HK thing and there’s a great deal of competition.
“The way to order is to pick two meats, which will come on a massive bed of rice with a little sliver of vegetables. I usually add half a salted duck egg, then take the little bits of that to put into my rice to season it.
“When I arrived for our recent filming trip, I went straight to a place on Queen Victoria Street called Lung Kee, which is brilliant.”
... Or try some fast food
“If you want to ease yourself in to Hong Kong food, the fast-food joints you find in the shopping centres are really good – chains like Maxim’s or Fairwood. They have big picture menus up on the wall, so you can see what you’re getting, and you just give the number of what you want to order.
“You’ll be well fed for a fiver, and it’s good, freshly made food: roast duck, barbecued roast pork, crispy pork, poached soy-sauce chicken with a bit of ginger and spring onion oil…
“That’s a little less intimidating for the first-timer than going straight for dim sum. I took Mel Giedroyc to a really old-school dim sum place for the show, and while I had my back turned to pick some more dishes, she took the chicken’s feet I’d given her and calmly passed them over to our driver friend. It was a funny moment, so I hope it made the edit!”
Pavement kitchens
“There are only a few dai pai dongs left. The term literally means 'big licensed street stand', and they’re outdoor wok kitchens – the stalls aren’t on wheels any more, but you can imagine how they once looked. It will be just one or two chefs cooking, out on the street, with these massive burners and the kind of heat that will singe your eyebrows. What’s amazing is the speed they cook: a stir fry that we might do at home in five or six minutes, they’ll cook in 45 seconds. The skill is incredible.
“Hong Kong kitchens are very vertical, as there’s not much space, so everything is stacked. There will be basketfuls of veg stacked by the prep chefs, to which, when you order, the wok chef will add the protein – dishing up black pepper beef and potatoes, or flash-fried chilli and garlic clams, or ginger and spring onion crab or salted egg prawns. There’s a great open-air stall called Oi Man Sang in the Sham Shui Po neighbourhood, where maybe 500 or 600 people each day are fed by two wok chefs and two prep chefs!”
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Spam with that?
“You should try a cha chaan teng, or tea house lounge. They started in the 1950s, and were what Hong Kong people saw as Western cuisine, so they serve really random things like instant noodles with spam and a fried egg on top. It might not be what you think of as Hong Kong food, but it absolutely is. There’s one called Tsui Wah that has recently reopened, over four or five storeys, and it’s open 24 hours.
“Want something even odder? At Yung Kee restaurant we fed [food critic and MasterChef judge] Grace Dent a 'thousand-year-old egg', also known as a 'century egg'. They’re actually only about 30 days old, but preserved in ash until the white turns translucent and the yolk gets bluey-green. I like them, but the colour puts people off, and Grace’s face said it all…”
Don't forget the chow mein
“A lot of the Chinese comfort food that we know in the UK originated from Hong Kong. Sweet and sour, black bean beef, chow mein… they would all have come from Hong Kong and that region around it. So don’t feel bad about going to Hong Kong and ordering a nice, familiar sweet and sour. In fact, you should – because that will probably be the best sweet and sour you’ve ever eaten…”
Jeremy Pang's Hong Kong Kitchen arrives on ITVX on Saturday 22nd March. His accompanying book Hong Kong Kitchen: Classic Recipes for Baos, Noodles, Street Food and More... is available now.
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