Classic Hong Kong restaurants: On Lee noodle shop, Shau Kei Wan

Shau Kei Wan Main Street East has always been busy. "Where the little park next to our shop is now, there used to be fishmongers. That's where my father bought fish for his fish balls," says Kay Cheng Siu-ki, one of the three Cheng siblings who run On Lee.

The famed fish ball noodle shop started out as a dai pai dong across the street, next to a Tin Hau temple. "When the area was being rebuilt, all the dai pai dongs on the street were given the chance to move into the municipal building. My father decided to close. That was in 1992. In 1997, he and my mother opened a shop on the left side of the Tin Hau temple, and in 2002 we opened the current shop. For a few years, they ran two shops," she says.

They now only have one.

Cheng and her siblings were not encouraged to join the business. "My father thought that it would be better if we all got white collar jobs, and said that people who run noodle shops always have dirty hands and wet feet."

But when her father died in 2009, Cheng says it was obvious that their mother wanted them to carry on their father's legacy.