Classic Hong Kong food stores: Hung Fat, Sham Shui Po

Every day around 3pm, Wong Hei-cheong sits at the booth of his 58-year-old cake shop, waiting to greet his regulars. Most of the time, they're silver-haired ladies or men who were his friends long before they started having to use an umbrella, cane or shopping trolley to help them walk.

Sometimes these old friends bring along their grandchildren and he serves them a slice of steamed brown sugar cake, or a little boot jai goh (glutinous rice flour pudding with red beans, steamed in a small cup), like he used to when he started the shop in 1955.

"Lots of children used to come on their way to school, or on their way back home. There aren't so many now," he says.

Born in 1921, Wong left Taishan, in southern Guangdong, when a family friend asked him to help out at his siu mei (barbecued meats) shop in Hong Kong. When Wong took over the shop, he started making Taishan-style steamed cakes, on the side. "I'd been eating them since I was a child, so I knew how they were supposed to taste," he says. "The cakes sold better than the siu mei. I stopped serving it very soon [after taking over the shop]. Maybe I wasn't so good at it."

The shop's interior has hardly changed since those days. The white tiles on the floor are cracking and old crates and equipment are piled in corners. "We still have the glass and chopping station at the front," he says.

At the entrance sits a giant steamed brown sugar cake. Made with brown sugar slabs and rice flour, it is a moist, elastic, and subtly sweet cake.