Classic Hong Kong food stores: Happy Cake Shop, Wan Chai

Amid the cake shops, high-end furniture makers and fashion boutiques on busy Queen's Road East in Wan Chai, several older businesses remain. Marked by their haphazard window displays and signage that has seen better days, they're easy to spot.

Among them is Happy Cake Shop, a Hong Kong-style bakery that has been around for more than three decades.

In the 1970s, owner Wong Siu-ping came to Hong Kong from his village in Bao'an, Shenzhen, as an illegal immigrant in search of a better life. "A relative introduced me to a baker in To Kwa Wan, so I learned to bake there. I felt it was better to learn a special skill," he says.

By 1979, he had saved up enough to buy the bakery business that was operating at his current location. The layout, with the kitchen and ovens at the back, and shop at the front, remains unchanged to this day. Everything is baked daily on site.

"Customers know if you're not giving them the best quality," he says. "It's important because we have so many regulars. People come in before work or school, children come for snacks after school and office workers buy egg tarts for parties."

The shop offers classic Hong Kong-style bakery items such as pineapple buns, egg tarts and less-often-seen cream buns and palmiers. "We make our own puff pastry by hand, and the only shortening we use is lard to keep the layers crisp," Wong says.