While in Hong Kong I got the chance to eat at some Michelin-starred restaurants (one of which I'll blog on soon) and a few other similarly upscale places, but to be honest, what I really wanted to do was eat what regular Hong Kong people eat. I finally got my chance at Nathan Congee and Noodle, a closet-sized restaurant in Kowloon.
The place is allegedly famous with local foodies, but also apparently has a reputation among visitors, as the menu was written in, of all languages, Thai:
We started with a few classic Hong Kong-style side dishes, such as kai lan with oyster sauce:
jellyfish salad with 1000 year-old eggs:
and lettuce with oyster sauce:
But the emphasis here is congee, made to order by a man in a small booth:
I ordered a bowl of fishball congee (shown at the top of this post), and like the bowls of the stuff I've encountered in Thailand, it was pleasantly bland, blandly pleasant, inoffensive stuff. I've never been a huge fan of congee, but can see why others like it, and by all standards, this was a pretty good bowl. I particularly liked the crispy deep-fried fingers of dough, which unlike other places, were still crispy.
Despite it not being the most delicious meal of my trip, I probably found it the most memorable, simply because it seemed representative of what people in Hong Kong really liked to eat, and didn't involve foam.
Nathan Congee and Noodle 11 Saigon Street, Kowloon, Hong Kong 2771 4285 7.30am-11.30pm
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