Shanghainese cooking, which became more popular in Hong Kong after the arrival of Shanghai refugees in the late 1940s, is sweeter and more salty than Cantonese food, and uses a lot more oil. Its characteristic dishes include: la dze jee ding, fresh chicken diced and fried with peppers and flavored with soy sauce; chao ha yen, small shelled shrimp garnished with green herbs or bean sprouts; and sze tze tao, pork sautéed with Chinese white cabbage and often served in a casserole.
Beggar’s chicken is highly regarded by colony residents, both Chinese and English, and can be ordered at Tien Hong Lau on Woosung Street, Kowloon; or other Shanghai places such as Winter Garden, Nathan Road; or Four Five Six, 340 King’s Road, North Point. Bamboo shoots, boiled crab and fried eel, in season, are also Shanghai treats.
Szechuan food is hot and spicy, with such representative dishes as: suan la tang, sour peppery soup; dried beef with peppers; and Szechuan duck, deep-fried to cook both the skin and the flesh brown, spiced with pungent black pepper and served with the meat so tender that it may be picked off the bones with chopsticks. The Ivy, at 11 D’Aguilar Street, in the Central District, is a familiar Szechuan establishment. There are others in the Diamond Hill section of New Kowloon, north of Kai Tak Airport, but one would probably need the guidance of a long-time colony resident to find them.
The Pekinese cuisine is best known for Peking duck, served as a suitable entrée for a meal that begins with assorted cold meats and proceeds through chicken and walnuts to the celebrated bird. The duck is basted with salad oil and roasted until brown, then the skin is dipped in soya paste with scallions and wrapped in thin pancakes to be eaten as a kind of sandwich; the meat is dipped and eaten in a similar manner and the bones of the duck are made into a soup with cabbage and mushrooms. Toffee apples and caramelized bananas (sugared and deep-fried, then immersed in cold water) top off the feast.
Two of the popular Pekinese restaurants are the Peking, 1 Great George Street, Causeway Bay; and the Princess Garden, Kimberley Road, Kowloon.
Hard to classify but too good to miss is the Mongolian steamboat, a cooking utensil used for Northern and Cantonese dishes. Hot coals are placed in the bottom of the vessel from which the heat rises through a chimney at the center. Water or soup stock boils in a little open-top tank that encircles the chimney. In the Cantonese style, tiny baskets of sea food, meat and vegetables are hung into the boiling water until they are done, then the contents are fished out with chopsticks. In the Northern Chinese variation, a soup stock is put in the reservoir with very thin slices of meat and sea food being dipped in until they are cooked, which takes only a few seconds. Both styles use various sauces and condiments to flavor the food after it is cooked and drawn out with chopsticks. The steamboat sits in the center of the table, puffing energetically, and every diner has a fine time dipping and fishing for his food.