Another Week in Hong Kong: North Point Sweet Treats to Queue for

If you have ever been to Hong Kong, you will know that there are not just people and buildings everywhere, but also plenty of good food to be found.  In fact, fantastic fresh food is so prized in the city that they have a serious problem with food waste: apparently up to 40% of food there goes uneaten, and most of it ends up in the landfill.

You have a good chance of a great meal just wandering in to anywhere that looks popular, but one area I make sure I go to every time I visit is North Point, particularly if I have a craving for something subtly sweet. I already shared with you last year a shop selling Chinese dessert soups, which has queues going around the corner.  That is certainly a good option for a post-dinner treat if you are in the neighbourhood, but what if you are looking for a little snack earlier in the day? Then I would recommend these egg-based crispy snacks...

Eggettes, or gai daan jai (鷄蛋仔) @ LKK (利強記)

Eggettes in Hong Kong.

A typical streetside snack in Hong Kong is the eggette, or gai daan jai (鷄蛋仔, "little eggs"), basically a waffle which is shaped like a honeycomb pattern of oval balls. You can find it for sale in many places, but the only ones I have purchased which have been consistently fresh and crispy on the outside, with the centre variously hollow or soft and chewy, have been at a hole-in-the-wall vendor called Lee Keung Kee (利強記).

Often hollow with just a bit of dough on the inside, the best ones are served hot and crispy.

Although this shop now has eleven branches, I have only tried the one in North Point, which I assume is where the business became famous, since it's also known as "that place in North Point".

Eggette-making in action.

Stalls that sell eggettes invariably also sell a waffle which looks much like what you would get here.  Known as gaak jai beng (格仔餅, "grid-patterned biscuit"), the difference is that this waffle (which is not really crunchy like the eggettes) is served folded in half with the delicious sauces of butter, peanut butter, condensed milk and sugar.  The only problem I have with it is that it is impossible to eat without the sauces dripping everywhere!

Hong Kong style waffle, opened up to reveal the sauces inside.

* LKK North Point Eggettes (利強記北角雞蛋仔)
492 King’s Road, North Point, Hong Kong (香港北角英皇道492號)
+852 2590 9726

Opening hours:
Mondays to Sundays 10am - 11pm

Paper bag with LKK branch addresses.

Queue outside LKK. You purchase the waffles through the little window hiding amongst all the newspaper clippings.

Egg Rolls, or daan guen (蛋捲) @ Duck Shing Ho (德成號)

I have mentioned egg rolls, or daan guen (蛋捲, "egg roll"), from Duck Shing Ho (德成號) in my blog before, but had not actually planned to buy them until someone reminded me again.  Apparently, once upon a time, you could just walk into the shop and buy your crispy delights, but these days, they are so popular that you have to queue.

Crispy butter egg roll from Duck Shing Ho.

We ended up visiting the shop three times to make a purchase. The first time we turned up, it was a Sunday, and they were shut.

Attempt #1: closed on Sunday

The next time, we turned up too late. The business was still open, but all the boxes I saw inside were already pre-sold to other buyers.

Attempt #2: shop open, but sold out

Finally, we turned up at 9:30am as instructed (though some recommend coming at 9am), and joined the already long queue.  Unfortunately, they did not have any more tins of the coconut flavoured egg rolls, but I did get to try the original and butter versions. I preferred the latter, which were more golden in colour than the pale original egg rolls, as well as crumblier and, well, more buttery.  Yum!

Attempt #3: queueing in the morning, 25 minutes in.

By the way, the queue on the left is for payment, while the queue on the right is for collection. I didn't realise until I got to the front of the payment queue that there is a restriction of 4lbs per person.  What that means is that unless you turn up with a friend, you are only allowed four of the smaller 454g tins. Makes it fairer on the people at the back of the line, I guess.

Finally, I get to collect my tins of egg rolls!

I was surprised to see that the butter egg rolls were only made of "fresh eggs, sugar, flour (cereals containing gluten), butter".  No secret ingredient like the vanilla essence in the recipe I tried (or perhaps just conveniently omitted?). There are no preservatives and the tin is not sealed—lift the lid and all you see is a sheet of waxed paper before you get to the crispy rolls. I guess that the success of making these, as with eggettes, is highly dependent on technique.

[Added 3 June 2013: By contrast, the egg rolls produced in mainland China under the October Fifth Bakery Macau brand not only come in vacuum-sealed packages (the 150g box I bought had five packets containing two egg rolls each, as well as a packet of desiccant), but also lists the following ingredients: wheat flour, sugar, egg, margarine [tallow, palm oil, soybean oil, salt, milk powder, emulsifier (E222, E471, E477), flavour, antioxidant (E320, E307), colour (E160a)], lard [contains antioxidant (E320, E321)], raising agent [E500(ii), E450(i), E341(i)], flour treatment agent (E928)!
]

* Duck Shing Ho Homemade Egg Rolls (德成號家鄉雞蛋卷)
Ground floor, 64 Java Road, North Point, Hong Kong (香港北角渣華道64號地下)
+852 2570 5529/+852 2571 5049

Opening hours:
Mondays to Saturdays 9:30am - 7pm

A Week in Hong Kong: Sweet Soups @ Wong Kei Tong Shui (王記糖水)

(See closest Auckland equivalents)

The Cantonese love to have their dessert in the form of a sweet soup, or tong sui (糖水, literally "sugar water").  It can seem like too much food after dinner, especially when it's made with a filling ingredient like taro, kumara or beans, but it's no worse than having bread and butter pudding after a heavy meal, right?

In Hong Kong, we were fortunate enough to live not far from a little shop specialising in sweet soups.  Wong Kei Tong Shui (王記糖水) is close to the North Point MTR station, and on most nights, you can see a queue going around the corner of the street.  Actually, there are two queues: the shorter one on the left, closer to the shop, is the one for dining in; the longer queue on the street side is the one for takeaways.

 

Queues at Wong Kei Tong Shui can go around the street corner.

Since the tiny shop only has a few seats, we have always opted for eating their desserts from the comfort of home. The polystyrene containers come in two sizes: most desserts could be had small for 15 HKD or large for 17 HKD.  The large tub holds roughly twice as much as the small one, so it is no surprise that I have never seen anyone order the small size.

Two servers are constantly filling takeaway containers from vats at the front of the store.

Although there were probably over 20 types of sweet soups available, we only tried a couple which we ordered over and over again, because they were so delicious we didn't want to take a chance with anything else.

Some of the sweet soups available.

One was a taro sweet soup with coconut milk and sago, or wu tao sai mai lo (芋頭西米露) listed on the menu as heung wu ye zap sai mai lo (香芋椰汁西米露).  They always ask you whether you want it with a drizzle of evaporated milk, or faa naai (花奶).  It went so quickly each time that I never managed to get a photo.

Another dessert we particularly liked was boiled glutinous rice flour balls, called tong yuen (湯圓), in this case filled with ground black sesame seeds and served in a thin ginger syrup.  This geung zap zi maa yung tong yuen (薑汁芝麻蓉湯圓) is the default offering, though you can also ask for the balls to be served in one of the other dessert soups, such as the sweet black sesame paste, or zi maa wu (芝麻糊).

Half-eaten tong yuen filled with ground black sesame.

On Christmas Day, we turned up for our usual dessert fix, only to find the shop shut!  For the first time, there was a queue for the dessert shop next door instead.  There were a number of others who were surprised to see their favourite shop closed; some joined the neighbour's queue, while others turned around and walked away.

Fung's Dessert (鋒少甜品) struggled with the unexpected patronage, with several customers having to demand their food after a long wait.  There was a delay with our tong yuen (though at least that meant they were freshly made) and we were disappointed with the number of balls that were served (only five in the container, compared with the eight or ten from our usual store).  The soup it came in was also more sugary and less gingery.

We were not able to compare the taro sago dessert between the two shops, because Fung's did not offer this option.  Instead, they had mango coconut sago soup, served cold rather than hot, which was actually surprisingly delicious.  The black sesame paste they made, on the other hand, was watery and bland.

There's a reason why there's normally a long queue outside Wong Kei Tong Shui.  Why not try it out, next time you are in North Point in Hong Kong?

Closest Auckland Equivalents

* Cheuk Cafe (卓悦美食)
466 Dominion Road, Mount Eden
(09) 551 3013

The only sweet soup here is the mango and sago one, but they have an exciting range of delicious and inexpensive desserts, as well as Hong Kong style snacks such as hot sandwiches and curry fish balls.  Although I have seen "durian snowballs" (balls with a thin glutinous rice skin, filled with durian and whipped cream or icecream) at China and Red Guard downtown, Cheuk Cafe is the only place in Auckland where I have come across durian pancake, that is, durian and cream served in a folded crepe (another of my favourite Asian desserts).  They also have an exciting range of icecream flavours, including lychee, mango, rose, durian and black sesame.
[Added 31 August 2014: Cheuk Cafe is now closed, but you can see another blogger's review of the place here.]

* Guang Zhou Soup Shop (廣州燉品店)
952 Dominion Road, Mount Roskill
(09) 620 2625

This plain looking shop with its hand-painted sign sells both savoury and dessert soups, as well as herbal teas and dishes with more solid substance.  Don't worry about all the Chinese on the walls; they do also have an English menu.  Prices here are ridiculously cheap, with a small coconut sago soup, sweet mung bean soup, peanut paste or sesame paste dessert costing only $2.  They may not be the best specimens of sweet soups, though well acceptable for the price, as the coconut sago we tried was thinner than the desserts we have had elsewhere.

* Hansan (漢山越南餐館)
Various locations, including Panmure and Newmarket
See www.hansan.co.nz for addresses and phone numbers

This Chinese-Vietnamese chain has some thick coconut cream desserts, not really liquid enough to be called a sweet soup, but warm and satisfying all the same.  Flavours include Banana Sago, Sticky Rice and White Bean, and Taro and Sticky Rice.

Restaurant Details

Wong Kei Tong Shui (王記糖水)
5 Shu Kuk Street, North Point, Hong Kong (香港北角書局街5號)
+852 2811 5611

Opening hours:
Mondays to Saturdays 6pm - 3am