Hong Kong is a city that knows how to eat and how to make every meal an experience. MasterChef Australia judge and co-owner and chef of Three Blue Ducks, Andy Allen, discovered a food culture steeped in history, creativity and exceptional produce.
What was your culinary experience on your recent trip to Hong Kong?
Life-changing! Hong Kong itself covers every single bracket that there is about food. That includes everything from local street food, the best of the best, cheap eats, and flavour-driven food with so much history wrapped around them. Moreover, that involves everything in between up to some of the world’s best dining experiences. Wing and The Chairman were absolutely mind-blowing.
What was unexpected about the food scene in Hong Kong?
For me, I didn’t expect the bar scene to be so amazing. We went to a few bars like Bar Leone. I definitely had some of the best cocktails in my life. The cocktails and food were next level. Moreover, they all offer really different experiences.
What’s one dish you’d recommend everyone trying in Hong Kong?
I’ll give you two dishes. One kind of street food-esque, which you have to go to Yat Lok, which is an extremely world-famous roast goose institution. I think we got there right on 12 o’clock. As a result, we were lucky that there was no line.
You go in and you’re in these really small cramped tables. You can just hear in the background the cleaver chopping up the goose that are hung in the kitchen. They have shiny, really crispy skin. We got half a goose in the middle of the table. It is so juicy, so moist, unbelievably tender for goose.
And at Wing I could have chosen many, many dishes off this menu. However, the one that sticks out the most would be their king crab dish. It comes out and the dish is kind of hidden by the head of the king crab, the shell of the king crab. Then it’s lifted off and there’s these beautiful legs lined up of the king crab.
But it was underneath that really surprised me. What surprised me was these little kind of plump rice noodles that had been fried, pan fried, a little bit like you would gnocchi. It had this beautiful texture to it. Namely, it was crunchy and chewy. And it had this really rich umami sauce that was made from obviously all of the off cuts of the crab and the juices and the head meat and all that kind of stuff. It was just unbelievable.
What else do you love about Hong Kong?
Sightseeing, which is interesting for me because I’m usually about food, food, food, and more food. But it took me by surprise, you know. Getting the tram up to the peak and looking out over the vista of Hong Kong was so beautiful and something that I never would have put on my list of things to do. However, it really did give you a great scope of not just the city of Hong Kong. In addition, it showed the beautiful islands that surround Hong Kong as well.
I think for a beautiful, relaxing pre-dinner boat ride, you have to go on the Junk Boat Aqua Luna. I kind of had this epic vision of me with my feet up on the side of the boat with a beer in the little stubby cooler. There was a 360 degree view of the city, which is bustling. Then you just slowly tinker around on this beautiful old wooden boat.
I also love the M+ museum. We went there and there was a Picasso exhibition showing there. You can spend half a day to a day there at least, but we had food to eat!
