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Home , Cantonese restaurant, Dim sum, Har gow, Lin Heung Tea House, Luk Yu (restaurant), Lung King Heen

Rents are rising, tastes are changing, and the undisputed capital of is at an inflection point. Eat up while you still can.

MAX FALKOWITZ

MARCUS NILSSON

126 AIRBNBMAG • FALL 2018 is a contact sport at Lin way, they stopped for and rest at roadside , Heung House. A new cart rolls which sold tea and little like dumplings and buns. As onto the floor, and for international trade grew, so did the need for teahouses to just a moment, the clatter of a thou- serve , not just to itinerant traders but to all classes of sand porcelain bowls and spoons -­speaking southeast . Foreigners may asso- quiets as a dozen hungry customers­ ciate dim sum with steamy carts and gilded halls, bum-rush the lady with the curried but at its core, the is mercurial. It’s called , or and siu mai. If you don’t shove literally “ tea,” and it refers less to a type of your way to the front of the queue, or set of dishes than a unique social event: a relaxed­ morn- dodging surly waiters swinging five-gallon kettles of boil- ing or afternoon meal with family, friends, and idle con- ing water, you’re screwed. The good stuff is all gone, and the versation. Dim sum, the small bites you eat alongside, is It’s easy to get overwhelmed with best you’re gonna get is a sympathy steamer of fish balls and choices at yum cha; here are some often translated as “touch the heart.” The tantalizing con- wrinkled skin. of the most common dishes to look for. cept spread beyond the Road trade routes, and today, Pro tip: Rather than swarm the cart as soon as it appears, with nearly 7.4 million people packed into just over 1,000 bao start your own queue where you know the cart will stop in The most iconic Fluffy steamed buns square miles, is the undisputed dim sum cap- the middle of the room. Keep your ticket ready for stamp- dim sum ­— filled with nubs of ital of the world. ing and point to the dishes you want in rapid succession. dumplings chopped roast pork Dim sum is Hong Kong soul food. It’s daily , Request them by name, if you know them, and don’t be shy. wrapped in chewy, in a sticky- Sunday , midday , and power rolled into The seasoned regulars you’re playing against won’t waste translucent skins. sweet glaze. one. There’s back alley dim sum and white linen time on please and thank you. Lo bak gou Mah lai goh dim sum, and in a status-driven city, it is the great equal- Then take your winnings back to your table and breathe; Squares of savory Steamed sponge izer: Plutocrats rub shoulders with construction workers, the key to weekend dim sum is the long game. Pour your- steamed -flour cakes, lightly often at the same table. self some tea, unfold your newspaper, and leisurely nibble cakes mixed with sweetened with But there are whispers—repeated often enough by indus- at your ivory-skinned rice noodle rolls filled with minced shredded brown sugar. try vets and enthusiasts to make me worried—that Hong radish, then crisped and sweet, pungent orange peel. You don’t need to eat Kong’s dim sum culture is in danger. No one’s saying it out on a flattop. Liu Sha Bao everything at once, and your seat is yours for as many hours Steamed buns loud, but the signs are there. The core fan base is aging. So as you want it. Siu mai filled with salted is the pool of skilled cooks who can make it. A chronic labor Yellow-skinned duck-egg . shortage is only getting worse. And in one of the world’s most dumplings with open tops, usually Dan tat expensive cities, rents are rising so high that some wonder filled with a finely Egg-heavy custard whether any of Hong Kong’s classic dim sum , THOUGH MY background is very much not Chinese, ­ ground mix of tarts baked in flaky founded on the premise not only of beautifully crafted bites at Lin Heung—a 100-year-old spot which (justly) gets a men- pork, shrimp, crusts traditionally but leisurely meals, can survive. made with lard. tion in every guide to Hong Kong dim sum ever written—feels and mushroom. Which is why I decide to head to Hong Kong on a week- like a kind of homecoming. My childhood best friend was Ngao yuk kau long dim sum bender, to chat up the experts over plate after Wu gok the son of Hong Kong expats, and as early as I can remem- Finely ground, almost plate of dumplings. In a city obsessed with its own reinven- A fried ball of bouncy steamed ber, we spent God-knows-how-many ­Saturdays with our tion, who will carry on this cornerstone of local heritage? mashed with , made with moms in New York’s , mystified by the frenetic a delicate, lacy beef or pork and sea - And who are they carrying it for? pageantry of palatial dim sum halls and the act of flagging crust enclosing soned with Worces- down carts of treats like taxis at rush hour. Even after our a savory filling, tershire sauce. usually chicken weekly trips ceased, we still exchanged matzo ball soup Cheong fun and mushroom. and , and after ­spending months apart at college, Steamed sheets of rice we’d always reconvene for dim sum. My nascent fascina- Fu pei guen noodles rolled around SUN HING opens its doors to night owls at 3 a.m. and rum- tion with Chinese and culture grew into a field of Steamed minced beef, whole bles through 4 the following afternoon. It’s the kind of small, study; I recently ­co-authored a with a rolls, usually filled shrimp, or crisp fried decades-old dim sum joint that caters almost exclusively to with whole shrimp. savory crullers. Chinese American­ from the northern city of Tianjin, people from the sleepy surrounding neighborhood of Ken- and I travel to Asia at least once a year to further my edu- nedy Town. I have several restaurants like it on my to-visit cation firsthand. Hong Kong, with its neon and crowds and list, but I’d heard good things about its vibe and steamed grit, feels remarkably similar to the New York Chinatown buns. There are no tourists at the crowded tables, and the its émigrés helped build. But the dim sum is worlds better. space is so small that the waiters, overwhelmingly female, Back when the city of was still a glorified Roman skip the carts for small trays from which they pass out dim pit stop, Chinese civilization was already more than 1,500 Learning the dim sum sum steamers. The only decorations are news clippings years old. Traders carrying fine fabrics, jade, and other trade at Hong Kong’s pasted to the walls, and the little space reverberates with Chinese Culinary sophisticated goods to the West traveled along a network Institute with Chef Chan chatty customers, waiters shouting orders to the , of routes called the , which meandered along Chun-hung. Previous and the clink of cups and kettles. The delicious cacophony page: Rush hour at southern China into India and the Middle­ East. Along the ZHU ZIPENG BY TYPE ILLUSTRATION . of old Hong Kong.

128 AIRBNBMAG • FALL 2018 129 “If you look like a foreigner, they usually give you green mention the talk I’ve heard among dim sum chefs about the by default,” my dim sum companion, Hong trouble with finding good cooks, he’s not surprised. Kong native Jay Khilnani, tells me as he breaks some “Young cooks can get better benefits in Western restau- leaves off a compressed brick ofbo lei, an aged, fermented­ rants,” he tells me while inhaling a cloudlike roast pork bun. tea. It’s the go-to drink for yum cha, revered by locals for its “More time off, better healthcare, more opportunities.” In ­stomach-settling properties. “You have to tell them to bring addition, Western restaurants in Hong Kong, he argues, you this instead.” Like many yum cha regulars, he carries encourage more creative freedom—and promote­ their chefs his own tea to dim sum, and as he is the proprietor of the to the public as a marketing ­tactic—compared to the world of online store TeaLife Hong Kong, his stash is a big step up Chinese fine dining, which rivals the French for its military from the restaurant standard. discipline and adherence to tradition. Even if you reach the One of the joys of yum cha is seeing your food before you top of a classic , you’re still expected to commit to it, and the steamed buns look spot-on. We order maintain your reserve, not campaign for your own celebrity. two baskets: one full of molten preserved egg yolk, salty and “It’s hard to open a restaurant in any city,” he goes on, “but sweet; the other stuffed with sticky-glazed nubs of especially here. Even more so if you’re not part of a restau- pork. The har gow, crisp shrimp wrapped in chewy, translu- rant group or in a hotel.” (Indeed, later that week I eat a flaky cent skins, look a little frumpy but taste just right; the shrimp puff at the phenomenal King Heen in the Four are fresh and sweet with a delicate snap, thanks to a brief Seasons that could trample any French .) tossing with baking soda, a common Cantonese technique. As Back home in New York, the same problem is playing out this is my fourth yum cha outing of the day, fatigue is begin- with its iconic local . My favorite pizza joints are losing ning to set in. The ma lai goh, or “Malay cake,” a towering business to a new wave of dollar-slice shops selling god-­awful steamed cake tawny with brown sugar, seems like the ideal iterations, but for half the price. And I can count the num- pillow to rest my head on for a quick mid-meal power nap. ber of places making legitimately good on two hands. Growing up, Khilnani went out for dim sum with his fam- Calvert joins in on my gummy- griping but agrees ily all the time. Casual places like Sun Hing—a dim sum–only that the Hong Kong dim sum world isn’t that dark. For one, joint, though many full-service restaurants offer dim sum at despite the aging population, dim sum as a phenomenon certain times of day—are newer in his dining rotation, but has never been more popular. Tourists come to Hong Kong he describes yum cha, upscale or not, as an essential ingre- from all over to taste the world’s best dim sum, and even as dient to family bonding. “I’d have it with extended family traditional restaurants struggle, new ones floated by ambi- and on school trips, too,” he says. “It’s like Sunday in tious investors are expanding the very idea of what a dim England, a social activity for the family.” The meal encour- sum meal can be. ages sharing, after all: You pass the steamers around and everyone retrieves a little morsel, rich enough to delight but small enough to keep you wanting more. The ebb and flow of carts sets a natural­ rhythm to the experience; the meal doesn’t thud in distinct courses so much as it unspools at a IN THE BLITZ of the city’s financial district, underneath pace all its own. Yum cha can take 30 minutes or three hours, a bank, Mott 32 is a subterranean vault of glass and gold, and with the right company, it’s hard to tell the difference. a testament to Hong Kong’s East-meets-West opulence. As you drink and chat and hunt for your favorite buns, the Unlike the city’s upscale yum cha vanguard—tony restau- outside world disappears. The meal has a way of easing ten- rants like or Seventh Son, favored by old- sions and spilling secrets. money elites—Mott 32 embraces foreign ingredients such Khilnani and I ply the staff with cups of his tea and pick as and Iberico pork to reimagine Cantonese recipes. their brains. Yes, the customers are mostly older, as are the The restaurant, which has a branch in Vancouver and will cooks. And the rent has been rising to a troubling figure: soon open others in Bangkok, Seoul, and Las Vegas, is the $140,000 Hong Kong dollars, about $18,000 US. Our lit- kind of show-off place where bankers take clients to make tle feast totals $180 HKD, and I start crunching the num- deals over applewood-roasted Peking duck and a starter bers in my head, calculating how a restaurant even keeps of truffle-stuffed dumplings. It’s also where executive chef the lights on at that rate. Lee Man-sing has created an innovative menu featuring siu The next day, I meet Daniel Calvert for breakfast at Dim mai stuffed with molten , flaky egg tarts baked to Sum Square, another no-frills neighborhood place he’s order, and hulking har gow fortified with Yunnan recommended for the shatter-crisp spring rolls blanketed ham. Yum cha doesn’t get more new school than this, which beneath wisps of rice noodle. Before moving to Hong Kong is why I’ve stopped by to get Lee’s perspective on how to run to become the head chef at French fine-dining destination a dim sum operation for the future—assuming you’ve got Belon, Calvert cut his teeth at Per Se in New York and Pied A spread at Lin Heung money to spend. Tea House, with beef à Terre in London, and his two years in the city have given steamed meatballs Like most upscale dim sum joints, Mott 32 has no roving­ him a frank opinion of the local restaurant business. When I taking center stage. carts. You order off a menu and get food cooked to order. For

130 AIRBNBMAG • FALL 2018 131 At Mott 32, executive Lee, dim sum is a chef’s opportunity to showcase all his artis- chef Lee Man-sing (left) cooks up high- tic talents, condensing a lifetime of ­experience and tech- end dim sum, like soft nique into a single mouthful. “It’s almost like handicrafts,” he quail egg, Iberico pork and black trufflesiu muses. “The details are so important.” After all, what is dim mai (on plate); South Australian lobster sum but a chef’s doled out in steamer baskets? har gow; and hot and He’s worked in restaurants for 35 years, and his training sour Iberico pork soup dumplings (center). shows. The lobster morsels are chopped just so; as my teeth break through the delicate har gow wrapper, they tumble across my tongue, sweet and briny and perfect. Many of Lee’s dim sum cooks are 40 to 50 years old, and as the labor pool ages, he says, competition for the good ones Barbecue pork gets more fierce every year. I ask if the labor shortage has steamed rice rolls something to do with an absence of new talent on the mar- (center) and golden sponge cake (above) ket. Surely there must be young cooks out there hungry for at Dim Sum Square. work? There are, he admits, but dim sum requires attention to details that most of us would never think to consider, like how to pack those bits of lobster into a precise a 3-D jigsaw puzzle that collapses just so when you take a bite. At the high end of the ­market, Mott 32 can afford the cooks it needs. (After all, those ­lobster har gow cost $115 HKD apiece—about 15 bucks.) But it has unquestion- ably succeeded in designing a yum cha experience cali- brated to its target market, decades younger than the retirees and 50-­somethings who fill teahouses like Lin Heung every day of the week. Here, and at other nou- velle restaurants like it, you will find a more worldly approach to dim sum that attracts ever younger din- ers. The food is far-reaching. The experience is stream- lined. There are no grandparents gnawing on .

IF HONG KONG dim sum has a future, it lies with a new generation of cooks trained to make it right. So, in search of insight, I ride down to Pok Fu Lam, a small, mostly residen- tial neighborhood that’s home to the Vocational Training Council of Hong Kong’s Chinese Culinary Institute. Estab- lished in 2000 as an expansion of the council’s other pre- professional technical programs, the school trains about 1,700 combined full- and part-time students in culinary skills across China’s regional , and matriculation numbers are holding steady. Chan Chun-hung is the 58-year-old chief instructor of the Chinese Culinary Institute, which covers dim sum as an essential pillar of Cantonese . Students must learn how to make and handle several kinds of dough cooked in a variety of ways, practice knife skills to a level of preci- sion that blows most European cooks out of the water, and maintain exacting consistency as they work. Maybe you can fold a perfect har gow, but can you perfectly fold 1,000 in the next hour? A 40-year veteran of the dim sum business, Chan is used to changes. He recalls a trend of late-night dim sum

132 AIRBNBMAG • FALL 2018 restaurants in the ’80s that mostly vanished due to chang- ing taste, and over the decades he has watched dim sum’s status rise in Hong Kong and across the world. He notes that despite its humble breakfast origins and relatively­ lower profit margin compared to lavishbanquet ­ cooking, dim sum has grown into a marker of prestige for the city’s top restau- rants and hotels, a way to communicate to guests that they take food and hospitality ­seriously. So an increased demand for dim sum cooks was already in motion when Mak Kwai-pui’s 20-seat dim sum restau- rant, , won a Michelin star in 2010 and became an overnight global phenomenon. Billed now as one of the world’s cheapest Michelin-starred restaurants, it has six locations in Hong Kong and 39 more around the world, which command hours-long lines for, frankly, mostly solid—if standard—dim sum fare. The subsequent desire for dim sum–exclusive restaurants fueled a surge in demand for skilled dim sum chefs, straining an already thin labor mar- ket to its limits. One of the VTC’s goals, Chan explains, is to supply new young talent to fill this demand in Hong Kong “and to pre- serve our culture.” The city’s hospitality industry is boom- ing, but these days a hot new opening is just as likely to be an Italian pasta spot as a Cantonese restaurant. And as the economy soars, young cooks are tempted to find other, more lucrative work, or pursue culinary fame overseas. To sustain this growing restaurant culture, the industry needs to encourage young people to enter the fold. “And they need to have a knowledge of traditional techniques at their base,” says Chan. Could dim sum be a victim of its own success, I wonder, watching a pair of students painstakingly mince vegetables with cleavers? It wouldn’t be the only one. You could say New York’s pizza culture is more diverse and delicious than ever before, as obsessive young chefs, raised on the same cor- ner slices I was, open ambitious and expensive restaurants devoted to advancing the art of pizza the way Mott 32’s Lee is advancing the craft of dim sum. But the corner slice shops are banks now, and it’s harder than ever to recruit capable pizzaiolos to run those pricey ovens. Chan senses my consternation and reminds me, “Yum cha has been around for a very long time.” And it’s never been just one type of experience. If a new wave of restaurants can attract young people to dim sum in ways the old ones can’t, “that is a positive thing. The new can coexist with the old.”

BY THE TIME I finish talking with Chan, I’m beginning to vaguely remember what hunger feels like. I’ve yum cha’d At Lung Keen Hing over a dozen times in the past week, and I’m desperate for at the Four Seasons, where the baked reinforcements. So I invite a couple of friends to meet me for abalone puffs (center) are not to be missed. Overlooking lunch at Yum Cha, another new-school dim sum spot with King’s Road, a four locations in Hong Kong. Priced between dives like Sun major city artery.

134 AIRBNBMAG • FALL 2018 Hing and splurges like Mott 32, Yum Cha ­leverages strong orders on the even tastier dim dim sum fundamentals into whimsical, Instagrammable menu. 27 Hillier sum, including presentations: Taiwanese pineapple cakes pressed into the Street; 852 2851 some must-try form of ortolans and enclosed in a birdcage; barbecue pork 8088 braised meats over rice. 46–50 buns with adorable piggy faces. The food tastes as good as it looks, and my friends, from Your Big Splurge: Late-Night Des Voeux Road Dim Sum: West; 852 2156 mainland , remark how much better the dim sum The dim sum Sun Hing 9328 tastes in Hong Kong than at home, just 70 miles away. “Even ­ranges from $66 A decades-old at a mediocre restaurant, the average quality is just so much to $205 HKD a and delightful Your Meat-Free higher,” one of them says as he pops another bite of pan-seared Kennedy Town Hideaway: plate, but if you . The weekend crowd—millennials aplenty and dive with excellent LockCha want to under- young families with kids—is eating it up. But I wonder how stand what truly steamed buns. It’s hard to be many of these families return every week, and whether any high-end Hong And if you’re out a vegetarian in Kong yum cha late and need a Hong Kong, but new traditions have started in this dining room. As we down tastes like, book sponge to soak LockCha, a serene the dregs of our tea, it occurs to me that, excellent turnip cakes a table at this up some booze, restaurant in Hong aside, there isn’t much about Yum Cha that scratches my child- Michelin three- note this: The Kong Park that’s hood itch for, well, yum cha. The trappings are there, but the star restaurant restaurant opens styled like a Jap- up for service anese tearoom, meal is unmistakably transactional. Where’s the joy in whil- in the Four Sea- ing away the morning hours, the sense of ease that comes with sons. Don’t skip at 3 a.m. makes it easy with the abalone puffs. 8 Smithfield Road; the best meat-free knowing that another bite is just a cart away? The waiters fourseasons.com/ 852 2816 0616 dim sum in the city. know how to arrange our dishes on the table so we can snap Its tea ­selection the perfect picture, but they also cagily warn us that we need to hongkong/dining The OG: is also the most leave by a specific time so they can prepare for the next group. Tea sophisticated. Great for Big Before I left New York, I hit up a Hong Kong expat pal for House lockcha.com Groups: Some of Hong restaurant recommendations. She sent a long list but also Maxim’s Palace Kong’s wealthiest Glitzy Modern told me flat out, “The places I used to go to with my parents City Hall old folks start Dim Sum: were nothing special, but the food wasn’t the point. We’d go One of the last their day here, Mott 32 to catch up or read the newspaper and just slow down with palatial dim sum a colonial-style Chef Lee Man- each other. That’s what was special to me.” halls in Hong open sing’s fine-dining Kong, and deserv- since 1933 with dim sum includes I can’t blame the people running Yum Cha for designing a edly popular with wood-paneled Iberico pork soup restaurant to survive in a cutthroat industry, nor for charging tourists and locals walls, cute antique dumplings and an order of magnitude more for their food to account for the alike. Despite the booths lining one lobster har gow. reality of doing business. And hey, the cooking is really good, enormous dining side of the first- They don’t come what the VTC’s Chan Chun-hung would describe as based on room, the dim floor dining room, cheap but are an a foundation of traditional techniques. But there’s an unset- sum is made with and traditional dim impressive look tling irony to watching commercial efforts like Yum Cha thrive enough love sum prepared with at what the dim to make yum cha expert care. sum of the future while the institutions that inspired them struggle to survive. pilgrims happy, 24–26 Stanley tastes like today. Cities change. Tastes change. Local traditions keep those and the restaurant Street; 852 2523 mott32.com changes in check, preserving a common experience that keeps easily accommo- 5464 us bound together. I feel pretty confident that as a culinary dates large par- Your Most phenomenon, dim sum will do just fine. It’s profitable and easy ties. Lines begin Budget-­Friendly Instagrammable to form by 10 a.m. to package and sell to a crowd driven by novelty in a market Old-: maxims.com.hk Classic: Yum Cha ruled by efficiency. Lin Heung Kui The steamed But yum cha is another matter. It’s more than a meal: It’s Perfect Neigh- No relation to buns have cute a little pocket universe, governed by its own laws and sense borhood Joint: the Lin Heung on animal faces and of time, and it demands a commitment to extra-dimensional Dim Sum Square Wellington Street the entire experi- social physics that’s anything but efficient. We don’t consume A popular but referenced in this ence seems built this type of experience—we participate in it. low-key hang article, Lin Heung for social media in Central with Kui is a similarly success, but And so, when the next steamer of har gow gets placed on charmingly competitive the kitchen has our table just so, I don’t snap a picture immediately. I take brusque old morning yum cha serious chops, a breath. I take a sip of tea. And I slow time down, for just a A balancing act Hong Kong arena. While the and those roast moment, before picking up my again. at Sun Hing, where service. There dining rooms look pork piggy buns diners can get their dumpling fix in are no carts here; almost identical, are delicious. Max Falkowitz is a James Beard Award–winning writer the wee hours instead, tick your the latter has yumchahk.com of the morning. TSAIH; JOCELYN BY ILLUSTRATIONS SPOT RESTAURANT FONG JING OF COURTESY CARD SUM DIM and the author of The Dumpling Galaxy Cookbook.

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