5 places to enjoy Hong Kong’s best coconut-based hotpots and other coconut dishes

When it’s hot outside, our bodies and palates naturally crave sweet, light and succulent ingredients that will cool us down. Summer fruits fit the bill, and in sub-tropical Hong Kong, we’re lucky to get the best of durians, mangoes, lychees and papayas.

Lately, though, another fruit is proving popular: coconut (yes, it is botanically a fruit). It’s partly for health reasons: nutritionists have done a 180-degree turn, and instead of condemning it as a “bad” fat that’s high in cholesterol, it’s considered by many to be a superfood, believed to have antioxidant, antiviral and immunity-boosting properties.

And Hong Kong restaurants are quick to jump on the bandwagon, incorporating coconut into numerous dishes, including using it as a base for hotpots.

At Coco Kitchen in Mong Kok, which opened in June, chefs from Hainan, where coconut is harvested throughout the year, designed a menu revolving around the fruit.

People in Hainan traditionally use coconut in many dishes, including steamed rice, stewed chicken, steamed egg and soup.

Coco Kitchen, which imports the coconut, chicken and other ingredients such as water chestnuts from the tropical Chinese island, makes a trademark dish of coconut chicken hotpot. The broth is limpid, with slices of coconut flesh in the pot. The soup is light and drinkable on its own, although it gains flavour as other ingredients are simmered in it.