DIVERSITY? PERHAPS THE word was coined to describe Hong Kong?s restaurants. They number in the thousands. But they also represent a huge range of cooking styles, moods and prices.
For hundreds of dollars you can eat a plate of fattened goose liver (foie gras) with sterling silver cutlery in a heavily draped gastronomic temple. For less than 20 of those same dollars you can consume a big bowl of pork ribs and spit out your bones on to a glass-topped communal table. Your choice. Your Aladdin?s cave, you might say, of palate riches to plunder.
During a recent two-week tour of eating out in Hong Kong, I found both ends of the spectrum immensely attractive. Each offers a richness of experience beyond contemplation. And in the wide middle-range of restaurants, there are also gems.
Ten days to spend in Hong Kong? Let me offer a few general tips and observations first about the territory?s eating places.
I suppose the first thing to understand is the function of Hong Kong?s top tables. Because of its financial and commercial status, the region hosts many very wealthy businessmen. Hong Kong is also a regular stopover for highly paid overseas executives. So top dining here is often about the kind of entertaining that goes with deal-making and rewarding clients, grand gestures and even grander expenditure.
Restaurants cater for this market to the hilt. How? By offering the traditional notion of superior eating ? what used to be called ?fine? dining. And because Hong Kong restaurateurs are as much ? or as little ? informed about world gastronomic trends as most people, this translates into high French cooking. In turn, that means that the most expensive of Gallic ingredients have to be prepared and served.