After our morning self-tour to the Hong Kong bird and flower market, we decided to have a typical Hong Kong breakfast at a Char Chan Teng. Ah dining at Char Chan Teng is an important part of Hong Kong’s culture as noted in many Hong Kong movies and TV dramas. Well Char Chan Teng is a traditional Hong Kong cafe that has this generic look. Even traditional cafes in Macau looks the same!
Since there are so many Char Chan Tengs around and we can’t decide which one to patron, what we did was we looked for a Char Chan Teng crowded with locals. Easy theory that work all the time! So we popped into a Char Chan Teng near Bird Market because there were many uncles with their birds (in cages of course) having breakfast! As expected, the food turned out to be really good. Here’s what we had at this Char Chan Teng.
That’s a Beef Chow fun, one of Hong Kong Char Chan Teng’s classics. Super nice! It has beef, hefen (wide rice noodles) and bean sprouts. Apparently all good chefs in Hong Kong should know how to whip up a good beef chow fun. The rice noodles is broad, elastic and a bit chewy.
Then we had a pork chop bun. The meat is quite tender but it was a little greasy. lol. The tomatoes were cold and freshly cut! Check out the sinful dollops of mayonnaise. This actually tasted better than the one we had in Macau.
When we’re in a Char Chan Teng, we cannot resists ordering the pineapple bun aka bo lo pau (???). Guess we watched too much Cantonese drama. This bun is so ‘familiar’ to us but we were pretty shocked when we found no pineapple in it.
Although bo lo pau is known as “pineapple bun”, it actually contains no pineapple! It’s “pineapple bun” because of its golden-brown sugary top crust which looks like a pineapple. Interesting.
The crusty top of the bo lo pau is made of sugar, eggs, flour, and lard. It’s kinda crunchy like sugar cookies. Sweet!
To yum cha (a term in Cantonese which means “drinking tea”), we had a quirky drink called Yuen yong (??), which is a mix of milk tea with coffee. It can be served hot or cold. I had the hot one while Mr.Ong had the cold one. We both prefer the cold version.
Well, most of the Char Chan Tengs offer the same fare. They normally have set meals and there are various sets throughout the day for breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. Their price is extremely affordable. We spent only S$12!
Dining at a Char Chan Teng is an eat-and-go experience. Well don’t expect service to be like a big restaurant. Char Chan Tengs are usually small and very busy. Be prepared to share a table with strangers, waiters yelling orders over your head or get the occasional nudge as people try to move about!
