The problem with dining with celebrities is that more often than not, you never get to look at the menu or the prices properly. On the other hand, the advantage is you will probably end up with a lot of complimentary dishes.
Such was the case lunching with Albert Cheng King-hon, talk show host and general pain in the authorities' behinds. He is not a man one misses easily. He looks familiar and certainly sounds familiar. Our choice of restaurant was his, a big vegetarian eatery hidden within the dull, grey industrial buildings of Kowloon Bay.
Naturally, he was recognised; he is, after all, friends with the owner, Thomas Chung, and before I finished reading the starters' list on the menu, Mr Chung was already suggesting our lunch dishes. Sipping his heung pin tea, Cheng told me he had been abstaining from meat for the past two years. 'I'm afraid of dying,' he joked. A minute later he conceded it was to stay healthy.
But he is not one of the fussy ones who do not touch anything with meat stock in it. 'It makes people fed-up because it would be such a hassle dining with you. Since I am not a vegetarian because of religious reasons, it is not so bad. I will just avoid the meat and take other things in the dish.' We apparently decided on some dim sum which included lobster dumplings ($18) - without lobster, naturally, siu mai ($18), taro dumplings ($18), and some sweet rice rolls. We mixed that with a touch of Japanese cuisine with a special sashimi boat ($168) and two sushi hand rolls ($56).
Topping it all off were some chilli salt fried 'kidneys' and an order of vermicelli braised with mushrooms ($65).
Cheng liked this restaurant, he said, because of the variety it offered. 'In Hong Kong there is not much variety in vegetarian restaurants unless you go for Western vegetarian meals.
'Eating in some of these [Chinese vegetarian] places is sometimes worse than eating meat. It's all just beans and fried stuff laden with cholesterol and fat. There's a lot of oil and albumin . . . very bad for you.' More than a handful of government officials would probably say the same applied to Cheng as well. He certainly has been 'bad' for some of the more tardy ones, and pulls no punches on air. As co-host of radio's most popular current affairs programme, CR1's Teacup In A Storm, ATV's Hong Kong Affairs and a weekly appearance on Wharf Cable, Cheng has clearly stirred up enough storms for government officials.
