Hong Kong cuisine is mainly influenced by Cantonese cuisine, European cuisines (especially British cuisine) and non-Cantonese Chinese cuisines (especially Hakka, Teochew, Hokkien and Shanghainese), as well as Japanese, Korean and Southeast Asian cuisines, due to Hong Kong's past as a British colony and a long history of being an international port of commerce. Complex combinations and international gourmet expertise have given Hong Kong the labels of "Gourmet Paradise" and "World's Fair of Food".
Background
Modern Hong Kong has a predominantly service-based economy,Hong Kong census. "Census labour data pdf ." Labor. Retrieved on 14 March 2007. and restaurant businesses serve as a main economic contributor. With the fourth-densest population per square metre in the world and serving a population of 7 million, Hong Kong is host to a restaurant industry with intense competition. Due to its small geographical size, Hong Kong contains a high number of restaurants per unit area.
With Cantonese ethnicity making up 92% of the resident population, dishes served at home were likely Cantonese cuisines. A majority of Chinese in Hong Kong are Cantonese in addition to sizable numbers of Hakka, Teochew and Shanghainese peoples, and home dishes are Cantonese with occasional mixes of the other three types of cuisines. Cantonese cuisine laid the foundations of Hong-Kong cuisine by being the dominant cuisine for the working-class throughout the 19th to early 20th century.
Rice is predominantly the main staple for home meals. Home ingredients are picked up from local grocery stores and independent produce shops, although supermarkets have become progressively more popular. Supermarkets dominated in the 2000s with 59% share in fruit retail, 52% in meat, and 55% in vegetables.
Hong Kong homes and kitchens tend to be small due to a high population density, and traditional Chinese cuisine often requires the freshest possible ingredients, so food shopping is undertaken frequently and in smaller quantities than is now usual in the West. Takeaway and dining out are also very common, since people are often too busy to cook with an average 47-hour work week.Steers, Richard. (1999). Made in Korea: Chung Ju Yung and the Rise of Hyundai. United Kingdom: Routledge.
Traditional street stalls, specialty foods, pastries, and restaurants have become integral parts of the Hong Kong culture. Dining has evolved from a necessity for sustenance into pursuit of aesthetic, aroma, and exquisite flavor.
History
18th century
Demands for Chinese goods such as silk, porcelain, tea spices created a trade imbalance between China and Britain. 1838 - The First Opium War shaped Hong Kong cuisine. British smuggled opium from Indian colonies into Chinese ports against the wishes of the Chinese government. Western dining was initially reserved for the elites. Post-opium war led to the birth of Cha Chaan Teng (Hong-Kong style cafes). These cafes offered affordable cuisine similar to Western dining to the local population.
19th century: Colonial origins
The cuisine of Hong Kong traces its origins to its founding as a British colonial outpost in 1841. Soon after the colony was founded, many Western merchants along with Chinese emigrants from nearby Canton flocked there to conduct business. Initially, Hong Kong society consisted of expatriate upper-class Westerners, working-class Chinese coolies, farmers and fishermen, and middle class Chinese merchants. The simple peasant cuisine was rudimentary compared to the cuisine of 19th century Canton (now commonly known as Guangzhou).
As the colony developed, there arose a need for meals to entertain businessmen. Some Chinese restaurants were founded in the late 19th century and early 20th century as branches of renowned restaurants in Canton and offered elaborate meals consisting of traditional Chinese "eight main courses and eight entrees" () types of banquets for 2 taels of silver, at the time equal to a clerk's monthly wage.pg 11–12, Famous Cuisine in Hong Kong (香港名菜精選), Wan Li Publishings, Hong Kong, October 1988 Before 1935 when prostitution was still legal in Hong Kong, female escorts often accompanied diners to restaurant meals, especially those of a business entertainment nature. Until the Second World War, opium was also offered. For the majority of Chinese who were not part of the merchant class, dining out in restaurants was non-existent and consisted of simple Cantonese country fares. Meat only appeared in festive occasions and celebrations such as birthdays were often done by catering services who prepared the meals at the celebrant's home. The restaurant scene for Europeans in Hong Kong remained separate from Chinese dining. Elaborate Western-style restaurants existed at the likes of Hongkong Hotel and subsequently Gloucester Hotel.
1920s: Cantonese influence
Hong Kong's dining lagged behind the then-leader of Chinese cuisine, Guangzhou (also known as Canton), for a long time and many Hong Kong chefs spent their formative years in Canton. Canton was renowned for its food, and there was a traditional saying of "The food is in Canton" (). Cantonese cuisine in Canton reached its peak during the 1920s and was renowned in the care in preparation even for peasant fares such as Char siu or boat congee. was renowned for its braised shark fin dish that charged 60 silver yuan, equivalent to 6 months' wage for a working-class family.pg 39–41, Special Test Editor (Chan Mun-yan) (特級校對（陳夢因）, Tèjí Jiàoduì (Chén Mèngyīn)), History of Cantonese Dishes (粵菜溯源錄), Food and Drink World Publishing Limited, Hong Kong, May 1988 The Guandong cooking style eventually trickled down to the culinary scene in Hong Kong.pg 31, Special Test Editor (Chan Mun-yan) (特級校對（陳夢因）, Tèjí Jiàoduì (Chén Mèngyīn)), History of Cantonese Dishes (粵菜溯源錄), Food and Drink World Publishing Limited, Hong Kong, May 1988
1949: Shanghainese and Western influences
The victory of Chinese Communists in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 created a wave of refugees into Hong Kong. A sizeable number of refugees were from non-Cantonese speaking parts of China, including the Yangtze River Delta, and introduced Shanghai cuisine to Hong Kong. On the other hand, most renowned chefs of Canton, now known as Guangzhou in pinyin romanisation, settled in Hong Kong to escape from Communist rule in mainland China.pg 40–41, Special Test Editor (Chan Mun-yan), Ibid Prostitution and opium had by then long faded from the restaurant scene, and to survive, many restaurants started to tap into profitable new markets by offering yum cha and wedding banquets, which coincided with an increasing interest in Western fare by the Chinese in Hong Kong. Egg tarts and Hong Kong-style milk tea soon became part of Hong Kong's food culture. It could be argued that the seeds of Hong Kong society as understood today were not sown until 1949, and the cuisine of Hong Kong has its direct roots in this period.
1960s–1980s: Prosperity
By the 1960s, Hong Kong was past the worst of the economic depression, and there was a long and continuous period of relative calm and openness compared to the Communist rule in Mao Zedong-era China and martial law isolation in Taiwan. The Cantonese cuisine in Hong Kong had by then surpassed that of Guangzhou, which had witnessed a long period of decline after the Communists came to power. The rising prosperity from the mid-1960s had given birth to increasing demand for quality dining. Many of the chefs, who spent their formative years in pre-Communist Guangzhou and Shanghai, started to bring out the best of fine dining specialties from pre-1949 Guangzhou and Shanghai. Families had largely abandoned catering services and resorted to restaurants for celebratory meals.pg 13–14, Famous Cuisine in Hong Kong () Seafood started to become specialised delicacies in the 1960s, followed by game in the 1970s.
This wave of prosperity propelled Hong Kong Chinese's awareness of foreign food trends, and many were willing to try foreign ingredients such as asparagus and crayfish from Australia. Foreign food styles such as Japanese and Southeast Asian cuisine started to influence local food, and the pace of change accelerated during the late 1970s and early 1980s. This gave birth to nouvelle Cantonese cuisine () that incorporated foreign dishes such as sashimi into Cantonese banquets.pg 11–13, New-Style Chinese Cooking From Hong Kong (), Wan Li Publishings, Hong Kong, October 1987 For the first time, many Hong Kong Chinese started to have the economic means to visit many Western restaurants of the domain of mainly wealthy expatriate Westerners such as Gaddi's of the Peninsula Hotel. During these years, there was great wealth growth from stock market investments, and one visible manifestation of the resultant nouveau riche mentality in 1970s Hong Kong were sayings such as "mixing shark fin soup with rice" ().
1980–1990s: links with mainland China and Taiwan
China initiated the reform and opening up when Deng Xiaoping came to power after Mao Zedong died. The opening up of the country gave chefs from Hong Kong chances to reestablish links with chefs from mainland China severed in 1949 and opportunities to gain awareness of various regional Chinese cuisines. Many of these cuisines also contributed to nouvelle Cantonese cuisines in Hong Kong.pg 10–11, New-Style Chinese Cooking From Hong Kong (香港新派中菜精華) The lift of martial law in Taiwan in 1987 jump-started Taiwanese links with mainland China and has caused a proliferation of eateries specialising in Taiwanese cuisine in Hong Kong as Taiwanese tourists and businessmen used Hong Kong as a midpoint for visits to mainland China. From 1978 until 1997 there was no dispute Hong Kong was the epicenter of Chinese, not only Cantonese, cuisine worldwide, with Chinese restaurants in mainland China and Taiwan, and among overseas Chinese communities, racing to employ chefs trained or worked in Hong Kong and emulating dishes improved upon or invented in Hong Kong. Hong Kong–style Cantonese cuisine () became a coinword for innovative Chinese cuisine during this period.pg14, Famous Cuisine in Hong Kong () It was even unofficially rumoured the Chinese government had secretly consulted the head chef for the of Hong Kong, part of the Maxim's restaurant and catering conglomerate, to teach chefs back at the renowned Quanjude restaurant in Beijing how to make good Peking duck, Quanjude's signature dish, in the early 1980s as the skills to produce the dish were largely lost during the Cultural Revolution.
Post-1997
After Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, the Asian financial crisis and SARS epidemic led to a decade-long depression. The boom in Hong Kong culinary scene came to a halt and many restaurants were shuttered, including a number of renowned eateries such as Sun Tung Lok. It is argued that the catch up in prosperity among populations from coastal regions of China, particularly the nouveau riche (derogatory Chinese: daai foon 大款) and corrupted officials (derogatory Chinese: daai ye 大爺), has driven up the demand of many delicacies such as abalone and grouper, and many celebratory dishes have become outrageously expensive that they are beyond the reach of even many upper-middle class Hong Kong families. At the same time, Hong Kong people's tastes have become cosmopolitan when compared with one generation ago. Many are now able to appreciate specific European cuisines rather than one generic "Western cuisine", and appreciation of other Asian cuisines, especially Japanese cuisine and Thai cuisine has been ever increasing. These have produced a proliferation of many specialist ethnic cuisine restaurants geared towards young middle class couples on one hand, and a consolidation of fine-dining Cantonese restaurants on the other.