What a vegetarian Hongkonger’s pantry looks like
From meat subsitutes and almond milk to mock fish balls, you’ll only find meat- and dairy-free ingredients in Green Monday co-founder David Yeung’s kitchen
The concept of Green Monday – being vegetarian for one day a week – is now familiar to many Hongkongers, thanks primarily to entrepreneur David Yeung, who co-founded the social enterprise in the city in 2012.
Three years later, Yeung launched grocery chain Green Common in Wan Chai, which now also includes two outlets in Central and one in Tsim Sha Tsui.
Green Monday advocates a meat- and dairy-free diet as a way to combat climate change, with animal-related industrial food production being a key contributor to greenhouse emissions.
“The purpose of Green Monday is to educate and empower people to move towards sustainable eating habits,” says Yeung, who is also chairman of retail groups Shine and Visual Culture. “I’ve been a vegetarian for 15 years, and shopping for plant-based food in Hong Kong has not been easy. My wife used to go all over town, just to get a couple of items. There was no one-stop place to shop. If you go to the supermarket, you might pick something up thinking there aren’t any animal products in it, but you look at the label and find that’s not the case.”
A native Hongkonger, Yeung lived and studied in the United States for more than a decade before returning to the city in 2003. Most of the foods that are now staples in his Mid-Levels home, and at Green Common shops, are from brands he found in the US, such as Beyond Meat, a maker of plant-protein meat analogues, or mock meat. Yeung uses Beyond Meat’s Beef Crumble, a minced beef-like product, in classic Cantonese home-cooked dishes such as steamed egg and yu heung ke zi, the spicy eggplant claypot dish that is usually made with pork.