Pork - it's the quintessential Cantonese meat. In a typical roast meats (siu mei) store, you'll find not only chicken, duck and geese, but at least two types of pork - sweetish barbecued char siu and salty roast siu yuk. Many outlets will also sell suckling pigs (yu ju) or roast to order. Both siu yuk and yu ju are roasted skin-on, forming a crispy layer the colour of burned caramel, atop moist, tender, pinkish flesh that oozes with juice.
But who makes Hong Kong's best roast pork, and which cut is the best? Barbecue head chef Li Ying-ki of two-Michelin-star Ming Court at Langham Place Hotel votes for the belly and ribs. Food lovers agree.
'The layers of fat in the belly make the pork crispy and juicy at the same time,' says Patrick Chan, a sales executive who eats siu mei at least once a week.
Wing Hing Roast Meats Experts in Tuen Mun is the last roaster in Hong Kong to have wood-fired, underground barbecue pits. 'The ovens get up to about 230 degrees Celsius,' says owner Lee Kuen-sun. 'But before we put the pigs in, we splash water on the fire to lower the temperature to just over 180 degrees.' Just two pigs are sold per day at their shop in Tuen Mun's Sam Shing Estate, so go early to get the belly cut, which comes with ribs. The rest of the 30 or so roasted pigs go to shops around the city. While the skin isn't the crispiest, Lee says their roast pork has a unique smoky flavour from the wood fire. This gives it depth and a mellowness that is hard to find anywhere else. The fat is well-proportioned, in thin parallel streaks; the meat is relaxed and tender, and the amount of juice it retains is incredible.
Charcoal is the name of the game at Prince Edward's Wing Hap Lung Restaurant, where it's not uncommon to see queues winding around the block. Every few hours, a 30kg pig with finely blistered skin is unceremoniously hauled out from the back kitchen to the siu mei masters behind their glassed-in station at the front. This is your last chance to place your order for belly. Blink and it will be gone. Like most restaurants that specialise in siu mei, Wing Hap Lung's pork belly is served on the bone, which gives it an extra edge when it comes to taste. Unlike most, however, it's not cut into neat cubes. Rather, it looks like a jumble of scraggly odds and ends. The skin is brittle and breaks into shards. The flesh has a bit of bounce and can taste a little too strongly of the five spice powder marinade at times, but it's a strong contender.
Joy Hing Roasted Meat in Wan Chai invariably crops up in talk about siu mei. The shop is always bustling, but I found the siu yuk dry and salty, with an unexciting crackling.