Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [88]
Some of the same edibles—but not the snakes—show up in two major food markets, one in the enclosed Sheung Wan complex and the other outdoors around Graham and Gage streets. The first requires a strong stomach, particularly in the downstairs fish and poultry section, where the Chinese desire for freshness results in some on-the-spot butchering and cooking. The breadth of produce on the upper floor makes us stagger: perhaps all of the two hundred varieties of Chinese brassicas (cabbages, broccolis, etc.), tofu of a thousand nuances, eggplants of every color and size, grapes almost as big as golf balls, mountains of bean sprouts, and pyramids of eggs, oranges, and tangerines.
The street market features a similar range of vegetables and fruits, plus flowers—orchids, peonies, proteas, roses, daisies, mums, and more—tanks of fish and seafood to take home live, sausages, hand-size knobs of ginger, lotus seeds, gingko nuts, fresh water chestnuts in their dark brown husks, and, as a thoughtful accessory, lots of rolls of toilet paper.
In the same vicinity, Hong Kong has sprouted its own SoHo (“south of Hollywood” in this case) around the Mid-Levels Escalator, which carries residents between the Central District and the homes and apartments on the slopes of Victoria Peak. The trendy area abounds with international restaurants and watering holes with names such as El Taco Loco, Nepal, Pepperoni’s, Phuket Thai, Archie B’s New York Deli, and the Rendezvous French Café and Creperie.
Our taste buds yearn instead for dim sum. Interrupting our walk temporarily for lunch, we hop a taxi to the Wan Chai neighborhood, no longer the raunchy nightlife quarter of Suzie Wong and Vietnam War R&R. Two of our favorite food authorities, Nina Simonds and R. W. Apple, Jr., have both raved in print about Victoria Seafood in the Citic Tower, where the dim sum is made to order rather than prepared in batches to be carted around for diners to select. While this method is preferable for flavor, it taxes us more in this case because we come up short again on English-language help from the menu and staff. As a Chinese cooking expert, Simonds wouldn’t have needed any assistance, and Apple arrived, most likely, announced as a writer for the New York Times. Our entrance, in contrast, suggests we’re clueless tourists gone astray, because the restaurant isn’t on the way to anywhere except perhaps a diving expedition in the nearby harbor.
The problem is compounded by the empty tables nearby, preventing us from falling back on the often reliable technique of pointing to indicate “I’ll have what she’s got.” In spite of the constraints, lunch turns out great, lacking only in our imagination of other treats available to the cognoscenti. Hairy crab dumplings top the lineup. The waiter brings the plump, juicy little purses in a steamer but then spoons them into small bowls to eat with a vinegar-soy dipping sauce. Two types of shrimp dumplings follow, one with a chubby pink shrimp glistening visibly through the sheer, pleated wrapper, and the other with tiny shrimp, greens, and Chinese chives in rice-paper rolls. The baked barbecued pork dumplings, next on the card, completely outshine the more common steamed pork buns offered on dim sum carts the world over. “This has to be lard pastry,” Cheryl says about the flaky crust holding the scrumptious meat. Sweet egg-custard tarts, just a single, ethereal bite each, provide a divine finish with a pot of jasmine tea.
“Good thing the cooks knew more about what we wanted than we did,” Bill says.
Unlike City Chiu Chow last night and the dim sum spot at lunch, our dinner restaurant, Hutong, deals with English-speaking tourists regularly. A strikingly handsome space, it gleams in the dim light from sleek ebony furniture, old Chinese objects displayed as contemporary art, and celadon-glazed porcelain tableware. Many people probably come for the view, similar to ours at the Y except a couple of blocks more distant and twice as many stories high. “From here,” Cheryl says, “the boats on the harbor look like bathtub toys.”