Culture Club | Surprise find: Berlin restaurant offers authentic taste of Hong Kong – without the Chinese city’s high rents

One of the unspoken rules many Hongkongers abide by when they travel to Western countries is to stay away from Chinese restaurants.

I’m sure there are plenty of great Chinese restaurants in the West – perhaps in Vancouver or Toronto where many Hong Kong people reside, though I haven’t had the opportunity to visit those two cities.

But for some strange reason, some of the restaurants I have seen in the West which claim to be serving Chinese or Hong Kong cuisines did not seem quite right.

The food was either cheap, greasy Chinese takeaway – fried noodles, dumplings made out of one-inch-thick pastry and sweet-and-sour pork (too sweet or too sour) – or Chinese dishes made with a Western twist (which means not Chinese at all).

Call me conservative, but as someone who grew up with fresh seafood and authentic Hong Kong-style Cantonese cuisine, visiting Chinese restaurants was never on my agenda during my stay in Berlin. I’m completely fine with salad and schnitzel.

But a recent experience in the German capital changed my perception a little bit.