Hong Kong, Summer 2013: Queues, Typhoons and a Few Favorites

Roger’s Asia chapter began with a bowl of pho at Pho Kimmy in Westminster — his last meal in the United States — and a short stop in Tokyo, where breakfast was soba and udon from a ticket-machine counter and the farewell meal was chirashi and uni. By mid-July he was posting from Hong Kong, and the summer that followed set the pattern for everything that came after.

Some posts are about waiting. At Ichiran in Causeway Bay, Roger finally got a seat after numerous attempts over a couple of months; the queue was usually an hour and a half. At Tim Ho Wan, the dim sum was worth its Michelin reputation — one of the better-tasting Michelin-rated spots in town, he wrote, when others are just all hype. And on August 14, with a Signal No. 8 typhoon raised that morning, the group still went for yum cha.

Others are about coming back. Australian Dairy Company shows up twice in August: first as one of his favorite spots for a local-style breakfast and milk custard, packed enough that sharing a table was normal, then two weeks later with simple but hits the spot every time. The Globe in SoHo, one of his favorite beer spots in Hong Kong, appears three times over the summer. Honeymoon Dessert and Sweet Dynasty each get two visits.

The captions keep the critic’s edge. A Vietnamese meal at Lo Chiu had good flavor but was so localized that it was far from authentic. A walk to Langham Place came with a small loss: the old restaurant where Roger loved the handmade noodles was gone. And a siu mei plate in Jordan came with a ranking — one of the best hole-in-the-wall joints in the area.

In between are the everyday stops that make Hong Kong living legible: Toast Box downstairs, turtle jelly to cool down from the summer heat, liquid-nitrogen ice cream on Knutsford Terrace, a Macau-style pork chop bun for a late lunch.

As with all of Travel Eats, these are dated 2013 records, not a current Hong Kong guide. The September and autumn stories pick up where this one leaves off.