HERE IS A sample itinerary for eating out in Hong Kong. I offer only suggestions, and you are bound to find your own favourites. My choices are also based on a fairly fantastic premise: that you have the means and don't mind spending big. At several of the places in this list you will pay an awful lot of money, and you might like to choose only one or two of them to visit during your stay. Breakfast choices are not included, as you cannot really go wrong ordering the first meal of the day in most hotels and in dim sum restaurants and noodle shops. So, let's go! Day 1 Wing Kee Noodles is one of the simplest, cheapest and best noodle shops in Hong Kong. About the size of a vacant parking place, it serves terrific soups, noodles and accompaniments in bright orange and yellow plastic bowls. Wing Kee is also innovative, getting you to mix and match greens, beef and fish balls, tendons, pig's blood and other options with three sorts of carbohydrates and two soups. ( 27 Sugar Street, Causeway Bay; 2808 2877) Continuing a staunchly Hong Kong theme, dinner is served at the venerable and excellent Yung Kee Restaurant, a stylish Cantonese venue in its seventh decade. Renowned for its roast and barbecued meats, among many other specialities, Yung Kee is most famous for its tanned, crisp-skinned goose. But the suckling pig and its paper-thin, fat-filled, brittle skin is brilliant. Excellent value for money. ( 32-40 Wellington Street, Central, Hong Kong; 2522-1624) Day 2 Another noodling start to the day, Mak's Noodle will get you going with what some believe are Hong Kong's best paste strands. They are full of flavour and wonderfully gelatinous. Mak's won tons are also renowned, consisting of a soft paste encasing a morsel of prawn tail and a kind of glue made from egg, and delicate dai di fish in powdered form. ( G/F, 77 Wellington Street, Central, Hong Kong; 2854 3810) MEZZ serves some of Hong Kong's best Australian cooking. Refined and original items hit tables set in a stylish, sleek ambience. Try the splayed boneless chicken that has been marinated before being grilled. It rides a terrific puree of Jerusalem artichoke and is crowned with a beret of nicely astringent green olive paste. ( Shop M20-M28, M/F, Prince's Building, 10 Chater Road, Central, Hong Kong; 2532 8989) Day 3 Lin Heung Tea House is a cultural and culinary gem that opens at about 11am. You share big, round, glass-topped communal tables with the locals, who pass the time reading the Chinese press and talking loudly. Lin Heung's food is the real thing - flavoursome and generous, and devoid of the overly sweet and salty tastes noticeable in much Chinese cooking. Try the sticky rice in a lotus leaf. (160-164 Wellington Street, Central, Hong Kong; 2544 4556) One of the best Italian tables in Hong Kong, DiVino serves Latin food prepared according to the Boot's great cooking tradition. A medium-sized eatery with contemporary decor, it makes a reliably fine risotto, but also serves more modern offerings such as a tablet of swordfish with wokked asparagus and oven-dried tomatoes. (G/F, 73 Wyndham Street, Central, Hong Kong; 2167 8883) Day 4 Lunch at Loong Yuen Cantonese Restaurant should propel you into a kind of gastro-stratosphere. Providing excellent value for money, this neat and quasi-opulent basement restaurant tables some of the tastiest Cantonese cooking. Technique and great ingredients are everything here, and you will find something as simple as white turnip cake with an XO chilli sauce beyond belief. (Basement 1, Holiday Inn Golden Mile, 50 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon; 2315 1006) After a great lunch, lighten up and head for the night market in Temple Street to snack on Way Kee's oyster pancakes. The batter is light, and the pancakes are chock-full of felty oysters and chopped spring onions. Chilli sauce is served on the side. (45 Temple Street, Yau Ma Tei; 2384 3717) Day 5 Tsim Sha Tsui's myriad narrow streets are filled with a host of small and modest shopfront eating places. You might like to explore these at lunchtime. Pick one on your own. It would be very difficult to choose badly. I like Yuen Kee, where roast meats over rice are tasty and cheap. But don't eat too much, because tonight you will need a good appetite for Gaddi's, Hong Kong's top eating place by several lengths, as they say at Happy Valley. It is all style, fine service, silverware, heavy linen, a live band and singer and some of the most refined French-accented cooking available. And the best thing is the tasting menu's relatively excellent value. Try the foie gras with a muscadet jelly. (1/F, The Peninsula Hong Kong, Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon; 2315 3171) Day 6 It's Indian and Japanese today, but you will notice a world of difference. At Jashan for lunch you will sample the tastiest of curries - the one of crab is utterly memorable - in a fairly confined but extremely genial space. ( 1/F, Amber Lodge, 23 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong; 3105 5311) Nadaman, on the other hand, is all haughty Nipponese class. Some of the world's best sashimi and sushi are served here, presented over ice in the most exquisite of montages. A sleek, stylish and quite expensive place, Nadaman makes cold udon noodles seem as if they were prepared by the gods. ( Basement, Kowloon Shangri-la Hotel, 64 Mody Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon; 2721 2111. Address: 7/F, Island Shangri-la Hong Kong , Pacific Place, Supreme Court Road, Central, Hong Kong; 2820 8570) Day 7 It's the Peak Cafe for lunch, but only because the pizzas are good and the people-watching is even better. Based on its food alone, this place perhaps shouldn't be as popular as it is with expats. Divided into several areas of differing moods and decor, the Peak Cafe is nowhere near The Peak itself, and serves a wide range of mainly simple European dishes. ( 9-13 Shelley Street, Central, Hong Kong; 2140 6877) A light Peak Cafe lunch will leave you the space to take on one of Hong Kong's big eats: dinner at the wonderful Grissini. This is hearty, Italian-influenced brasserie food in a swish contemporary room with an arc of windows overlooking Victoria Harbour and Central. Dishes are enormous and beautifully cooked. Half a large pigeon, for example, is served with an unsweetened apple puree and a salad of fine dressed lambs' tongue lettuce. ( 2/F, Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, 1 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong; 2588 1234 ext 731) Day 8 Luk Yu Tea House for a late yum cha, only because of its authentic between-wars decor featuring timber panelling, stained-glass light boxes depicting a galleon on stormy seas and a country lane, and ancient fans on the ceiling. The buns and rice-noodle rolls are OK, but drink in both Luk Yu's terrific tea and the ambience. ( G/F, 24 Stanley Street, Central, Hong Kong ; 2523 5464) Geared up several notches is Yunyan Szechuan Restaurant, where a modern, bright and unprepossessing ambience sets the scene for some excellent and authentic spicy Szechuan dishes. The whole Mandarin fish served in slices under a dark-brown 'froth' of crispy yellow beans is simply divine. ( Unit A, 4/F, Miramar Tower, Miramar Shopping Centre, 132-134 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon; 2375 0800) Day 9 A great and stylish Cantonese basement restaurant. That's Shang Palace, which serves subtle yet refined dishes such as glaring white tiles of jelly-like clam meat with capsicum tickets of several colours. Hue is important here: the imperial red of Shang's fret-worked screens is said to be among the most authentic. ( Lower Level I, Kowloon Shangri-la Hotel, 64 Mody Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon; 2733 8754) At night in Petrus, you will experience the region's most extravagant and ornate dining. The 56th-floor view is breathtaking, the dinner-suited service almost obsessional, and the traditional French haute cuisine favourites are excellent. And there is a page of Petrus wines to choose from. (You may need to rob a few of the banks you see in the mist below before dining here.) ( Level 56, Island Shangri-La, Hong Kong, Pacific Place, Supreme Court Road, Central, Hong Kong; 2820 8590) Day 10 One of the most genial ways to end your gastro-tour in Hong Kong is at Toscana. The service here is arguably the most friendly and hospitable in the region. Offering a traditional fine-dining ambience, Toscana tables impeccable, conservative Latin dishes made from the best ingredients money can buy. Toscana ( 1/F, The Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong, 3 Connaught Road, Central, Hong Kong; 2532 2062) To round off an arduous week of eating, what better than to sup on the most refined flavours and textures of Cantonese cuisine. Fook Lam Moon might not present itself as an extraordinary restaurant. In fact, its decor is fairly nondescript. But the shark's fin offerings, abalone presentations, lobster and bird's nest concoctions are among the world's most subtle and magnificent. ( 35-45 Johnston Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong ; 2366 0286. 53-59 Kimberley Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon; 2866 0663)