Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Native dishes of Hong Kong

It appears from your other posts that you are collecting this information for disparate parts of the world (Portugal and Chicago in addition to Hong Kong). Hopefully you are planning to visit some of these places and actually try the food.

It’s hard to say what is “native” as Hong Kong is primarily a place of immigrants who brought their cooking with them. Some of the earliest people here were tribes like the Hakka, but they have been overwhelmed by other immigrating Han Chinese. And while the Han Chinese are primarily from Guangdong (Canton), there is a good sprinkling from other provinces too. So the food is a mix, although Cantonese is the most widely available type of Chinese food.

That being said, some “traditional” Hong Kong dishes to try would be:

1. Most any type of seafood, for sure have a steamed fish, a Cantonese specialty
2. Egg tarts and Pineapple buns (the latter is not what you think)
3. Milk tea, sweet and thick with condensed milk, try a cha chaan teng (coffee shop) like Mido for this
4. A bowl of won ton noodles, esp at a dai pai dong street stall (try the eastern end of Wellington Street in Central under the escalator), or a more famous place like Mak’s Noodles
5. Roasted goose and roasted pigeon
6. Barbeque pork, either as part of a dim sum item like cha xiu bao or on its own
7. Chicken and duck feet
8. Hot pot

You can also have Haakka food at a few places, like Hakka Ye Ye (http://www.yeyegroup.com/ )

Finally, don’t leave out cuisines of other countries, as they are well-represented and for the most part well done here, esp Indian and other South Asian, Japanese, Korean and Italian. Or fusion kitchens.