A Goodbye to Hong Kong with French Toast, Noodles, and Dim Sum

We didn’t eat in the Tai O fishing village, but instead returned to Kowloon and had a late lunch at the Sweetheart Cafe on Ashley road. This was my first experience with the culinary delight known as “Hong Kong French Toast” which is not for the faint of heart or stomach. It’s two slices of bread with peanut butter, battered and fried with butter and syrup. This was oh-so-good, but also so very heavy, all for 44 HK$ with iced milk coffee. Mom had udon soup with pork cutlet. Tip: Look for restaurants offering “Tea” time specials from 2-5pm.

Sweetheart Cafe with Hong Kong French Toast.

Before dinner we went to a nearby night market, but did’t really find anything to buy.

Still full from “tea”, we had a light dinner at Ah Say Fast Food on Lock Street. We shared an order of stir fried udon noodles with pork garnished with sliced chilies, garlic shoots, and lots of black pepper, and some Chinese cabbage with lots of garlic. With a glass of milk tea it was 88 HK$ total. It was surprisingly good for “fast food”.

Tip: Order at the counter, pay, and they give you poker chips with numbers on them for the food. Go pick up food when number (in Chinese) is called. They called our numbers in English for us.

To end our last night in Hong Kong we walked over to the fancy hotel and retail center called 1881 Heritage House. There we found a cafe outside in the “mall” area of the hotel that served cocktails. There I had a delicious drink call the Jasmine Dream made with gin, Advocat jasmine liqueur, lemon juice and bitters. Expensive at 100 HK$, but a nice end to the evening.

In the morning we went shopping for food for train; chips, wine, pastries. We also returned our Octopus cards for a 50 HK$ refund minus 9 HK$ fee. At lunch time we walked across the street from the YMCA toward a walkway along the harbor to meet my friend Ray for lunch at the lovely Dim Sum restaurant called Serenade. The view can’t be beat and the food was delicious. We had pork belly, glutenous rice, shui mai, dumplings, egg tarts, rice sheet rolls with shrimp.
Ray lives in Hong Kong and was kind enough to go to the train station and buy our overnight sleeper train tickets to Shanghai for us months before we arrived. This saved us a huge amount of hassle because I just could not figure out how to do it online in advance and we didn’t want to risk having them sold out when we got to Hong Kong. He also went with us back to Guangdong BBQ on Ashley Road to help us order some BBQ pork and duck with rice to take on the train with us (88HK$ for both). Thanks again for all your help Ray!