Rice dishes that you eat with knives and forks; fried spaghetti topped with barbecued pork - the food served in Hong Kong's tea restaurants, neither Chinese nor western, reminds us of the territory's colonial past.
The development of Hong Kong's food culture is closely related to the city's economic and social changes over the last century, as revealed by Hong Kong's Food Culture, an exhibition now on at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum.
Photos, cutlery, furniture, menus and food products are used to illustrate the development of Hong Kong food culture in various aspects: festival food, food industries, dai pai dongs and tea restaurants.
Tea restaurants are a living by-product of decades of colonial rule. With the new government in the early 19th century came British food and delicacies in fancy packages, spicing up the local food scene. As people became more and more fascinated with western food, sorbet cafes sprang up, providing soft-drinks, cakes and ice cream to common folks who couldn't afford western restaurants.
After the second world war, Hong Kong-style tea restaurants mushroomed to provide 'localised' western food at reasonable prices to cater for the masses.
Part of the exhibition features old tea restaurant-style seating booths, fans dangling from the ceiling and tables covered with green and white chequered cloth. This was where east met west - diners used knives and forks and talked loudly across the table. Western recipes were dished out with Chinese seasonings like soya sauce and ginger, earning these dishes the name 'soya sauce western food'.
Even nowadays, tea restaurants are still a place for the 'mix-and-match' of different cuisines, signifying a distinctly Hong Kong cooking and dining style, according to the exhibition.
