Classic Hong Kong restaurants: San Hang Yuen, Sham Shui Po
Chow Chi-kin's all-day cha chaan teng is never far from his thoughts, and that's a good thing for his loyal clientele, writes Janice Leung Hayes
been operating a 24-hour cha chaan teng for the past 18 years with no more than a week's holiday each year, Chow Chi-kin looks surprisingly bright-eyed. "I can't stay away from here. When I went to Australia for my daughter's university graduation, I was thinking about the shop almost all the time," he says with a laugh.
Chow works in every part of San Hang Yuen, which his father set up in the 1960s (their logo says 1968, but Chow says it was just an approximation). He cooks the pork knuckles, wipes down the simple folding tables, and mans the cash desk. He does it all diligently, proud that he is the torchbearer of the family's legacy.
"My father was getting old and he asked me to come back and help him," says Chow, who, at the time, was quite satisfied with his job as an electrician with local conglomerate Dah Chong Hong. But he went back without hesitation: "My siblings have all emigrated, so I'm the only one he can count on."
Chow senior, Chow Sau-ming, started San Hang Yuen when he left a previous partnership, also a cha chaan teng. It started out as a dai pai dong on Kweilin Street, just steps away from the current shop. It offered a standard Hong Kong café repertoire of milk tea, toast, macaroni in soup and the like. Chow says, "Our milk tea recipe has over 60 types of tea leaves - even though it's all Ceylon tea, there are leaves in different sizes and origins." When he took over the business in 1995, and bought the current shop, he decided to create a more diversified menu and to operate round the clock to capture more business.
San Hang Yuen is now famous for one of the items Chow introduced - slow-cooked pork knuckle in naam yu (red fermented tofu) sauce, served with noodles. Chow says, "Most people just cook the knuckle whole. We separate the toes from the heel, and cook them for different times. We also let it steep between periods of cooking. It makes it much more tender." Although it is a relatively new item on the menu, it was Chow's father who inspired the recipe. "He used to work in a noodle shop before starting his own business, so I definitely went to him for his opinion," says Chow.
Regulars to the cha chaan teng will have noticed that Chow has been grooming his son-in-law, Isaac Ng Man-sang, to take over. They'll also notice a new logo on the walls. Chow says: "I got the name and logo trademarked. You never know if the young ones will want to expand."