Note, this travel tips blog post is about six months in the making since I had visited Hong Kong back in March! Nevertheless, Hong Kong is one of my favorite places to visit and I’m including a bunch of random thoughts about our (my family joined me – yay!) visit to this amazingly vibrant city.
For starters, this city is a foodie’s paradise! While visiting the city, we had the luxury of having an old friend of ours be our tour guide. And she was telling us that she had friends from Singapore (another foodie paradise) come to Hong Kong two to three times a year just to eat at the different restaurants. Heck, the pineapple bun (pictured to the left) at a deli in the Hong Kong Convention Center was amazingly delectable!
These tips are hardly the insider’s view of Hong Kong as I was on a business trip with my family. Nevertheless, hopefully you can find the handy for your next trip, eh?!
Shopping
For a trendy place to shop within Hong Kong on a tight schedule, check out Langham Place. It is located in Kowloon right off Nathan Road – where all the major jewelry shops and major shopping centers sit.
Architecturally, Langham Place is magnificent- the picture to the right is from within the shopping center looking down from the 13th floor to the main foyer. If you easily can get vertigo, you may not want to lean against the glass!
From a shopping perspective, most of floors contain familiar Western designs. But go onto the 9th floor or above, you will get a quick feel of Hong Kong styles and designs. For example, my daughters are huge fans of Rococo now.
Langham Place Foodie
The shopping center itself has a lot of local foodie fair but fair warning that most of the restaurants on the main floors (4th floor, basement) are your standard shopping center restaurants. Note, that is standard Hong Kong shopping center restaurants – so they are actually quite good! But if you desire to challenge your palette, a great place to challenge this is the nearby Ming Court 明閣 in the Langham Place Hotel. The restaurant boasts two Michelin star chefs – and one of their signature dishes – pheasant – was amazingly prepared.
Hello? How about Dim Sum?
Switching back to traditional Hong Kong palettes, there are of course many great places to chow down on dim sum. A new favorite of ours near Star Ferry Pier is the Serenade Chinese Restaurant. In addition to the great views of Victoria Harbor and the decent price, the dims sum choices are plentiful and the flavors they deliver are stunning. And for fun, they even have candied puffs in the shape of rabbits and mice – a great hit with the kids.
Egg Tarts!
Funny thing about this blog post is that it started as a travel post and became Foodie Friday post. Like I had started off in the beginning of this post, Hong Kong is a foodie’s paradise. I’m missing a bunch of restaurants from this trip alone. But I cannot end a Hong Kong blog post without a call out to egg tarts.
I’m sure I will ensue some form of debate but the egg tarts from Kee Hing Café are by in large the best egg tarts I have ever had – and I have had a lot! Creamy, warm, flaky, the egg tarts have real substance yet do not weigh you down.
Enjoy and eat well!
Leave a Reply