Much has changed on Hau Fook Street in the past 40 years. The small dead-end street next to Granville Road once had just two restaurants, one serving seafood and the other specialising in the cuisine of Shunde.
'There were also stores selling silk, metal, stationery and Indian groceries and herbs,' says David Wu Yuk, owner of The Sun & Moon Co. His father first rented the shop in 1969 to sell fruit and fruit juices, bought the premises about 20 years later and gradually expanded the selection to include other types of beverages, including an impressive collection of wine.
'My father started as a hawker selling fruits at the junction with Granville Road, to raise me and my seven brothers and sisters,' says Wu. 'The rent went sky high in the 1980s during Hong Kong's economic boom. So he started selling wine and liquor to balance the expenses. My shop now sells more than 300 kinds of liquor but I also sell freshly squeezed juices as a kind of legacy from my father.'
Two decades after the Wus started out, Cheung Chor-suen and his partners opened Ching Yan Lee Chiu Chow Restaurant across the street from the wine shop. 'We moved to this street from Granville Road 20 years ago,' says Cheung.
Others soon followed, and the street is now crowded with 18 food and beverage outlets. '[Some of the restaurants that opened] could not survive more than one or two years because of increasing rent,' Cheung says. 'We can still keep the business running because we have a group of loyal customers. We are the only Chiu Chow restaurant in this alley and we serve higher-end dishes such as shark's fin.'
The two original Hau Fook Street restaurants are long gone but competition between the current outlets is fierce at lunchtime.
Dinnertime is often a different story. 'This street is funny,' Cheung says. 'It goes from two extremes, one night it could be quiet, with very few customers around, but sometimes it's so busy there is a queue at almost every restaurant.'