Oh, do we have restaurants in HK.  Every kind.  Every cuisine.  From every part of the world.  The local cuisine, of course, is Cantonese.  Eating out is a consequence of (a) the small apartments and (b) multiple wage earners in almost every family.  A typical HK block has twenty restaurants and the remarkable thing is that they are almost always full of customers.  The volume means that prices are comparatively low.  In the morning there is a local custom to go for dim sum.  Cantonese wrap rice, seafood, meat, and other things in sizes that are comparable to finger food or hors’d’ouvres.  They are steamed in little round bamboo baskets, each with a cover.  You buy in threes and fours and of course eat with chopsticks.  Nearly all tables are round.  One colorful thing is to see the restaurant adjust for the size of the dinner party.  If the round table is not quite big enough there are round plywood table tops that suddenly get rolled out (literally) from a back room.  The larger diameter table top is slapped on top of the original and immediately is covered with a clean white table cloth.  Hey, that’s a feature of dining here.  Only the low of the low end “greasy spoons” lack table clothes.  In the a.m. walking to work I see delivery trucks bringing huge bundles of tablecloths that must have been laundered overnight.

Eating is meeting and meeting is eating.  That’s a local saying.  And it is true.  A lot of business is done over the table.  The cuisine is such that you get manageable portions.  You just don’t have the American “supersize” problem.  And the restauranteers don’t turn up their nose if you say, “My wife and I will share this order.”  We do get doggy bags as well.

No tipping.  How about that!  If a waitress is especially gracious (most are naturally so!) you might slip a little gratuity.  And it IS a gratuity, not an expectation.  That’s nice.

Seafood is plentiful and good.  In some restaurants you pick out your entrees live and then they cook them as you wait, which is usually not long.  Chicken is a staple for meet, but pork is not far behind.  And we have good beef, though the Chinese aren’t into steaks.  You have to go to a Western chain like Outback for that.  Is it true that the Chinese eat strange things?  It is said “if it moves, it can be eaten!”  Well, I’d have to say that most fare is not outlandish.  I’ve had snake and eel, but not yet had dog or 100 year old eggs.  There are websites that I’m convinced are put up to gross out Westerners where you see such “delicacies” as roaches, scorpions, worms, and other things we would call vermin.  Please, though, that’s not the usual!

There are over 300 McDonalds in HK, but the largest chain is KFC.  We also have Burger King, Starbucks, Ruby Tuesday and TGIF.  There is no Starbucks where my wife and I live.  But we hear one is coming.  This is a world city!  Our McD’s have yellow corn.  Pizza Hut loves to put corn on Pizzas.  Yet Pizza Hut here is a restaurant with a broad menu with pizza being a minor part of the menu.  We have a PizzaHut near our seminary which serves once a week as our “faculty room.”  We all retire at 1 p.m. for an hour and a half meeting.  The proprietor the Pizza Hut has become a good friend.  Personal relationships in HK are “gold.”  We get a discount card and special treatment.

Our favorite local restaurant is Shanghai Po Po.  A “po po” is a grandma.  The food is Chinese.  The service is fine.  The prices are moderate.  And the tea is first rate.  I’ve not mentioned tea.  The first thing you are asked upon being seated at a table with a white tablecloth (but no napkins—you are expected to bring along your own little packet of tissues) is what tea you want.  There are choices.  And no tea bags.