Horlicks, the popular UK malted milk drink, is a staple, as is robust, creamy milk tea. Flaky egg tarts are among a broad selection of bakery items, including fluffy pineapple buns, sweet-savory pork floss buns, and simple crispy buns drizzled with sweetened condensed milk. An array of baked rice dishes round out the savory items. Take the pork chop rice, a Cantonese recipe with a fried rice base, finished with Western ingredients: a blanket of tomato sauce topped by melted cheese.
Midcentury Beginnings
Like language, cuisine develops over time. Hard edges fray and fuzz. Before you know it, a brand-new style of cooking emerges. So it was with Hong Kong’s cha chaan tengs, which popped up in the aftermath of World War II, as Western influences began to shape the city’s dining scene.
Samuel Dic Sum Lai, a PhD candidate at the University of London, has dedicated his studies to chronicling the ambiguous history and culture of these restaurants. His work is difficult because written historical accounts of cha chaan tengs largely don’t exist. “Before 1997, a lot of people didn’t really think that cha chaan tengs were something worth remembering,” he says.
Still, there are some parts of the story that he can place in time. “The name came into existence in the ’50s,” Lai says definitively, pointing to the amalgamation of several restaurant styles popular in midcentury Hong Kong.
