Hongkong Food & Cuisine

When it comes to Chinese food, there certainly is a good variety to choose from - Szechuen (spicy), Beijing (e.g. Peking duck), Guangdong (plenty of that since Hong Kong is in Guangdong, most famous kind would be "dim sum"), Teochew / Swatow (e.g. marinated duck), Shanghai (spicy noodles, small dumplings), just to name a few kinds.

Dim Sum
Dim sum is a wide range of delightful Chinese snacks served in bamboo baskets accompanied by Chinese tea. Having dim sum in Hong Kong is a unique experience you shouldn't miss. 

Seafood
For a distinctive culinary experience, try the fresh seafood. The freshness is guaranteed as you can select live fish from tanks at the restaurant. Whether you like steamed, fried or grilled seafood, try it cooked Hong Kong-style!  Quality Tourism Services (QTS) Scheme
The QTS Scheme makes it easy for you to find restaurants that you can trust. Just look for the QTS sign displayed prominently by restaurants that have qualified for this exclusive award.

If you are a seafood lover, it is plentiful in Hong Kong. There are countless restaurants that have fish tanks outside (and in) displaying the goods, and you can even point and choose.

Must Try
Egg tarts - you must try these. They are my favorite. Available at most bakeries (the cake shop at just about every MTR station usually has them in the morning), they smell great and taste great! In Cantonese, it is "daan tard". You can find them in dim sum restaurants also.

Roast pork - also a must! Available at Chinese fast food places and local restaurants. If you see cooked chickens and slices of cooked meat hanging in the window, you can probably find it there. You can get roast pork with rice for US$3 or so. Roast pork in Cantonese is "char siu".

Cha Siu Bao - roast pork buns. There are two kinds, steamed and baked. The baked ones are available in the morning at all the little cake shops in the MTR stations. The steamed ones are available at many Chinese restaurants that sell "dim sum" (i.e. snacks) during morning and lunch hours.

Exotic Foods
Stinky tofu - fermented tofu deep-fried. The smell is horrendous. They can be found in some Shanghaiese restaurants, I think. (One store on the "goldfish street" in Mongkok is spotted selling it. 
Jelly fish - known as "hoi jit" in Chinese restaurants
Thousand-year egg - eggs black inside, but not really that old! more
Pork brains - kind of like tofu, with slightly more texture and body.
Frog - often cooked together with rice, tastes and feels like chicken.
Snake - a delicacy, very rich, not recommended in large amount unless you know what you are doing. Also tastes and feels like chicken (what does not?) - well, the skin doesn't feel like chicken when you hold it alive.
Ox whip - you can guess what this is! (hint: it is in the same category as mountain oysters) (It does not taste like chicken!)

Snake shop window front
Duck's feet / Chicken feet - quite common and you can always find them in dim-sum restaurants. more...

Intestines and Inerds - prepared in many different ways, they come from chickens, geese, pork, beef; you name it, they have it.

Dog - in Hong Kong, they usually come hot. There is no specific restaurant that sell them, but you can find the raw material in any bigger supermarkets, canned or refrigerated. Now of course I am talking about hotdogs, since dog eating had been made illegal years ago! So if you want to eat man's best friend, you will have to go to Korea!

French toast Hong Kong style - they put peanut butter in between two slices. Try it, you may like it even though I don't!
 
Foreign Foods
Foreign to the locals, that is. After eating Chinese food for a few meals, you will probably crave for something familiar - if not, your kids will. Fear not, these are there waiting for you.  There are hundreds of McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut and Spagetti House.

Real Foreign Foods - foreign to both the locals and westerners. Hong Kong is such an international metropolis that you can find just about any kind of restaurants here. French, Italian, Singaporean, Japanese, Greek, Indonesian, Spanish, Thai, Indian, Korean, Mongolian, German, ... just to name a few. But how authentic they are, you will be the judge!

Pictured below is what sometimes known as the SOHO district (South of Hollywood - Hollywood Road, that is). Close to the financial district, it is crowded with restaurants of all kinds. You can easily reach it via the escalators going up from Central to Mid-Levels.