Home of Dim Sum and Milk Yogurt: Hong Kong

My second trip to Hong Kong was on business (April 5-10, 2014), yet I arrived a few days early to spend time with my friend Helen and dine on yummy dim sum.

Helen's since moved back to the U.K. but for my first night I enjoyed this modern Japanese restaurant called Roka which had spectacular sushi in a very upscale restaurant.

The next day, Sunday, I went to one of the oldest and most famous dim sum restaurants, City Hall Maxim's Palace.  As you might imagine, I've been to many dim sum (or as Aussie's refer to it as Yum Cha) restaurants.  What was unique about Maxim's is that the carts it pushes around have signs in both English and Chinese identifying what dim sum are being pushed around in the cart.

Maxim's right along the harbor and with its fancy chandeliers was quite a fancy place.  Yet, like all others, there is a door from which all the carts come out with fresh dim sum from the kitchen.  

A cart was just coming out of the kitchen, when suddenly an older man at a nearby table jumped out of his seat and darted across two rows of tables to grab one of my favorite dim sum dishes - the cha shu bow.  While I was very impressed with his assertiveness, I thought to myself, since I was eating alone (which is hard to do as you can't order as many different dim sums) and needed to pace myself, I wouldn't be doing any "jump and dash cart attacks".  

Yet wouldn't you know it, I was there for nearly 2 hours, and no carts passed by with cha shu bows! So, yes, I stalked the carts coming out of the kitchen until I finally got my cha she bow!

 After lots of dim sum, a walk around the city was in order.  As I walked from Maxim's next to City Hall, through a pedestrian tunnel and into the "Fifth Avenue of Hong Kong", all along the way I noticed Asian women spreading out tarps, having picnics and playing cards with each other. I initially thought that since this was all around the high-end shopping district this was a boycott in protest of under-paid workers of luxury items. Yet, I later learned that these women are housekeepers and nannies  and Sundays are their day off. As they live with their families and the point of a "day off" is time away from the family, they gather in parks with other housekeepers and nannies.

Thanks to Supriya we were turned on to this great steamed milk pudding place on the Causeway Bay called Yee Shun Milk Company. No surprise, I ordered the pudding with red bean :)