Humid with a Chance of Fishballs: the Hong Kong food tour that takes you ‘off the eaten path’
- Leader of the excursions, Virginia Chan, appears on the Netflix show Restaurants on the Edge
- She says her company aims to show guests another side of the city
When Virginia Chan takes people on food tours of Hong Kong, she is also exploring her roots.
To help host chef Dennis Prescott get a true taste of Hong Kong that will be reflected in the cafe’s revamped menu, “street-food master” Chan – as she is billed on the show – takes him on a sentimental tour of Sham Shui Po, the Kowloon district where her father grew up. There, Chan introduces Prescott to a selection of local dishes, from doggy noodles (thick rice noodles that resemble dog tails) to street-food classics such as cuttlefish skewers and spicy fishballs.
Chan’s choice of Sham Shui Po mirrors her company’s strategy of avoiding well-trodden tourist trails.
“We get off the beaten path and showcase old Hong Kong craftsmanship, and give guests an insight into what daily life is really like in Hong Kong,” says Chan, adding it’s important to support “mom and pop” businesses that are slowly disappearing amid gentrification.
For one tour, Chan dishes up an “eat like a local” experience in her home district of Whampoa, where guests learn about the five flavours in Chinese cuisine: sweet, spicy, salty, bitter and sour. Another tour involves a seafood feast (think spicy typhoon shelter crab) on the city’s last remaining sampan floating restaurant, in Causeway Bay, where guests learn about the history of the Tanka boatpeople after first witnessing some “villain hitting”, a folk ritual to dispel demons.
Chan says she has many fond food memories from her childhood growing up in Vancouver.
“Food played a big role in family life and it was as much about texture as taste,” she says. “My dad would make a killer sea cucumber stew. And Sundays in Vancouver were all about dim sum.”
“We’ve had to cut back but Hong Kong is a resilient city … it will bounce back.”
