eating all of the things
We were walking around a block of Kowloon, killing time until we were supposed to be seated at this dim sum restaurant. To hear the foodies talk about it, Tim Ho Wan earned its Michelin star based purely on the virtue of its barbecue pork buns, but it never let fame get to its head, so unlike other Michelin starred places, it never pumped up its prices. Thus, Tim Ho Wan has the distinction as the cheapest place to ever earn a Michelin star, and so seemed worth the hour wait that was quoted to us as party number 13.
After being told that it would take an hour to be seated, the host just said that we could walk around and just come back later. Everyone else seemed to be doing the same, so we wandered, and wound up walking through a open air fruit market. While ayun was happy to snap photos, I wanted to buy a couple of mangoes. Say what you will about the glories of modern logistics and living in a world where you can live in Cambridge, MA and buy baguettes that were baked in Paris yesterday -- there is still nothing that compares to having a fresh mango in the tropics. There were other fruits that tempted me: atis, lychees and rambutan, but we would't have time to finish all of them while we were in Hong Kong. Another visit, perhaps.
Once we finished walking through the market, I suggested that we drop by Tim Ho Wan again. It had only been twenty minutes, but I wanted to see where we were in the queue. ayun looked at me skeptically but went along anyway. We leaned on a wall near the restaurant. Most of the other folks in queue were still dispersed, still wandering. The host looked at his clipboard and then called out, "Party 1!"
He looked at us, and I shook my head and replied back "Number 13." He looked back at his clipboard, then said again. "1?" No answer. "4? ... 6? ... 7? ... 13." We made eye contact and he waved us in. Ha-ha, suckers. Welcome to China, where waiting in line only gets you so much.
The food was worth the hype, and as we tucked into steamer baskets of lotus leaf sticky rice and shrimp dumplings, I mentioned at some point that when I was visiting the Philippines, I loved being able to get a simple meal of grilled meat and rice for just the equivalent cost of a dollar, which prompted ayun to say, "ok, let's trade: cheapest meals you've had abroad."
these pork buns cost, like, $2.50 for three
"Cheapest or best value? I mean, hell, I've had crepes in France that I've paid for with just a postcard."
She told me about the grilled fish that she'd buy from street vendors in Istanbul, paid for on less than a dollar, and eaten while looking out over the Bosphorus. That aspect of buying food while wandering a city was going to be a theme of this trip.
Later that evening, while wandering the Temple Street Night Market, I talked her into pulling up chairs at a corner shack with signs offering fresh chili crab. We ordered plates of crab, stir-fried in mounds of garlic and chilies, with rice to soak up the juice and beer to wash it all down.
There's always an inherent fun in eating crab, in the way it rewards you for getting dirty, cracking claws and legs underneath your fingers, and not caring if juice and garlic oil and chili bits splatter your hands. Dig the meat out of the corners of shell, suck the juice from every crevice. If there is a food that most rewards us for being a tool-using alpha predator, it's probably crab.
heatray once said to me that he liked to watch me eat, because he felt like, while a lot of his friends enjoyed and appreciated food, I relished the actual act of eating. And, well, I guess there's a few reasons for that. I like the way that meals can be this experience that is shared amongst friends, as well as a moment that punctuates parts of our day. I like the way food triggers and establishes memories, and it doesn't have to be fancy or special in order to be memorable. Sometimes it's as much about the company or the context of the meal as the food itself. I often joked that, when traveling, my family tended to plan their vacations around where and what we'd eat, then picked out museums and attractions to kill time until we got hungry again. That may be a bit of exaggeration, really, but not by much.
After being told that it would take an hour to be seated, the host just said that we could walk around and just come back later. Everyone else seemed to be doing the same, so we wandered, and wound up walking through a open air fruit market. While ayun was happy to snap photos, I wanted to buy a couple of mangoes. Say what you will about the glories of modern logistics and living in a world where you can live in Cambridge, MA and buy baguettes that were baked in Paris yesterday -- there is still nothing that compares to having a fresh mango in the tropics. There were other fruits that tempted me: atis, lychees and rambutan, but we would't have time to finish all of them while we were in Hong Kong. Another visit, perhaps.
Once we finished walking through the market, I suggested that we drop by Tim Ho Wan again. It had only been twenty minutes, but I wanted to see where we were in the queue. ayun looked at me skeptically but went along anyway. We leaned on a wall near the restaurant. Most of the other folks in queue were still dispersed, still wandering. The host looked at his clipboard and then called out, "Party 1!"
He looked at us, and I shook my head and replied back "Number 13." He looked back at his clipboard, then said again. "1?" No answer. "4? ... 6? ... 7? ... 13." We made eye contact and he waved us in. Ha-ha, suckers. Welcome to China, where waiting in line only gets you so much.
The food was worth the hype, and as we tucked into steamer baskets of lotus leaf sticky rice and shrimp dumplings, I mentioned at some point that when I was visiting the Philippines, I loved being able to get a simple meal of grilled meat and rice for just the equivalent cost of a dollar, which prompted ayun to say, "ok, let's trade: cheapest meals you've had abroad."
these pork buns cost, like, $2.50 for three
"Cheapest or best value? I mean, hell, I've had crepes in France that I've paid for with just a postcard."
She told me about the grilled fish that she'd buy from street vendors in Istanbul, paid for on less than a dollar, and eaten while looking out over the Bosphorus. That aspect of buying food while wandering a city was going to be a theme of this trip.
Later that evening, while wandering the Temple Street Night Market, I talked her into pulling up chairs at a corner shack with signs offering fresh chili crab. We ordered plates of crab, stir-fried in mounds of garlic and chilies, with rice to soak up the juice and beer to wash it all down.
There's always an inherent fun in eating crab, in the way it rewards you for getting dirty, cracking claws and legs underneath your fingers, and not caring if juice and garlic oil and chili bits splatter your hands. Dig the meat out of the corners of shell, suck the juice from every crevice. If there is a food that most rewards us for being a tool-using alpha predator, it's probably crab.
heatray once said to me that he liked to watch me eat, because he felt like, while a lot of his friends enjoyed and appreciated food, I relished the actual act of eating. And, well, I guess there's a few reasons for that. I like the way that meals can be this experience that is shared amongst friends, as well as a moment that punctuates parts of our day. I like the way food triggers and establishes memories, and it doesn't have to be fancy or special in order to be memorable. Sometimes it's as much about the company or the context of the meal as the food itself. I often joked that, when traveling, my family tended to plan their vacations around where and what we'd eat, then picked out museums and attractions to kill time until we got hungry again. That may be a bit of exaggeration, really, but not by much.