youtiao | Memorable Dishes

One of the best things when travelling with people who know the place is their recommendation on where to eat. Since my mom goes to Hong Kong every year, she has either tried or heard of somewhere good to eat. She doesn’t use computers or any fancy restaurant apps. She just knows from being there and talking to her friends to find out where to go.

I, on the other hand, rely on technology to find places to eat. I actually discovered the Openrice website and app while searching for restaurants in Hong Kong. This app might be better than Yelp because it’s what locals use to search for restaurant recommendations. It’s actually great because it’s in both English and Chinese. So you can match up the Chinese characters from your app to the restaurant if the sign is in Chinese only and you don’t read Chinese 🙂 .

Aberdeen Fishball & Noodles Restaurant (香港仔魚蛋粉) is one of the places that we stumbled upon when travelling around in Mong Kok. There are many locations around and it seems like some locations are better than others. The reason we went in was because my mom knows that it’s one of the popular chain places. This place is famous for their fish ball soup noodles.

Fish Ball Noodles – Don’t remember being spectacular but the fish broth was pretty tasty. The broth is made with water chestnuts and dry bean curd sticks hence the milky white broth. The homemade chili oil goes great with this dish.

Fish Ball Noodles

Sei Kee Congee (西記粥店) is one of the places we go back to every time we visit Hong Kong. There seems to be three locations but we always go to the one on Prince Edward Road. It’s a hole in the wall and the first place my dad took us to when my husband went to Hong Kong the very first time. This place is famous for their “fresh boiled” congee (生滾粥) which means they cook all the ingredients as you order them. My husband has fond memories of this place especially the minced beef congee—his all-time favourite Memorable Dish. My favourite congee to order in Hong Kong is the Boat Congee (艇仔粥). It has a mix of different ingredients but mostly seafood, hence the name “boat”. This congee is quintessentially Hong Kong and every restaurant makes it slightly different.

Minced Beef and Boat Congee – Just like how I remember them. Standard taste like all other congee places I had but very hot and fresh.

Youtiao (Chinese fried cruller) and Cheung Fun (rice noodle roll) – I don’t remember seeing them making these in-house. They taste ok, nothing spectacular.

Minced Beef and Boat Congee (right), Youtiao (Chinese fried cruller) and Cheung Fun (rice noodle roll) (left)

When travelling to the same place more than once, we tend to go back to the same restaurants over and over again. The food might not be the best but we tend to go back anyways. I think it’s because it brings back nostalgic travel memories for us. Sometimes it’s not about the food, but it’s about the company.