Cantopop

People who visited Hong Kong before should be familiar with cha chaan teng (茶餐廳), and some probably fall in love with them already. Cha chaan teng is actually a typical Cantonese type restaurant serving large variety of affordable food. Here you can find so many different things, from pineapple buns for breakfast and tea, to roasted pork rice for dinner. They have so much to offer that Hong Kong people just love them.

Because cha chaan teng is a place of fast serving, few of them are really decorated and polished to be a high-class restaurant. Only recently some of the cha chaan teng started to take a high-profile direction and have their interior completely renovated to be so modern and slick.

Cantopop, located in Central, pushed the upgrade even further. It is a collaboration between the famous lady chef of Yin Yang, Margaret (徐蒝) and the renowned Italian restaurant Posto Pubblico, and they are to guarantee the best ingredients for their food in Cantopop. The vegetable served here is organic, while the eggs here are also lain by chickens which listen to music in the farm! Margaret explained that the music calmed the chicken down, so that the chickens were happy and bad better appetite. The eggs they laid would be of higher quality. The restaurant also insists on not adding any MSG to the food, and what you eat here will be truly healthy and original.

The rice dishes looked really different from the unpolished kind in other cha chaan teng, though they tasted good. I however think that they should add a little more salt (hey that's not unhealthy to have a little more salt to bring up the flavour, right?). The roasted pork did not really have the "roast" taste, probably because they used a different way to make it.

I thought beef shank sandwich was already extinct in Hong Kong except in a few really old traditional tea houses, but I was glad to find it here on the menu. I am not a fan of cool sandwiches actually, but this one was not bad at all. Cold thin slices of shanks mixed with vegetable were sandwiched in the bread. Again, Margaret also advocates a healthier eating habit by introducing more green in the food, and so even in sandwiches she adds some vegetable, which also adds a nice crispiness to the sandwich.

The Ovaltine ice-cream was certainly interesting. Made by their own kitchen , the ice-cream was served with a slice of toast, which reminded me so much of a breakfast! Yes, toasts with a hot Ovaltine in the morning are probably part of the memory of most Hong Kong people here. That slice of toast here was indeed a very thoughtful and tasty addition to the ice-cream.

Overall, this place was not bad at all. Food was a little too light in flavour for me, but everything was clean and well thought of. From how the food was served, you can see the details and care from the chef. Using organic food and adding more vegetable to the menu are definitely attractive to those who put their health on the list of priorities, though the big price tags do not seem to make too much sense. Still, it is great to see an evolution coming along for the traditional dining place in Hong Kong, which is no doubt an important piece of our collective memory.