HONG KONG: Our breakfast spot

One of the must-dos on my Hong Kong list was to visit a dai pai dong (大牌檔). It’s a basically an open-air food restaurant with a few tables and stools. The key to success is rapid turnover and inexpensive food.

Dai pai dong usually serve breakfast, or traditional Cantonese food like congee or noodles with fish balls. Those in business districts are packed during lunch time. Some have names and signs; some don’t.

These stalls are literally named after the large size of the licences issued by the government that required photos of licensees on them, hence “big licence stall.”

They became so popular and numerous that the government stopped issuing big licences after 1956, and restricted them to be passed on only to spouses when a licensee died. If he/she was not married, then the licence would just expire.

That’s one of the reasons why the number of dai pai dong is dwindling. But those that remain are always busy.

My mom led us to Sing Heung Yuen (勝香園) one morning because she used to live near there. “It’s famous for beef and tomatoes in noodle soup,” she said. What a strange thing to be famous for, we thought.

It was about 10 a.m. on a Saturday and the four big round tables were already full. We lined up with a few others on the sidewalk and waited about five minutes for some stools to open up.

This is not fine dining. When it’s busy, it’s elbow-to-elbow with strangers at a big table. The abrupt ladies who work here are all about getting you fed and getting you out. They’re not going to baby you if you’re indecisive, or can’t read the sticky, laminated, one-page Chinese menu.

But you can point to people’s bowls. Or turn to fellow diners like my mother, who noticing the bewildered looks on the two guys next to her — they turned out to be from California — offered to help them order.

Here are the basics. There’s a noodle soup option. This dai pai dong does a tomato-based broth. Choose macaroni or ramen noodles. And then pick a topping, from beef to ham slices to chicken wings to pork chops.

Then there’s the toast or sandwich option. Choose a toast topping (jam, butter, peanut butter, condensed milk) or a sandwich filling (fried egg, pork chop).

For drinks, there’s traditional Hong Kong milk tea, iced tea, pop etc.

It took less than 10 minutes for our noodles to arrive in large, sometimes chipped, bowls. They were huge. The beef slices are tenderized and then marinated, giving them that texture you tend to find in Chinese noodles.

We saw big empty cans of Italian plum tomatoes piled on the stairs, but there were also fresh tomatoes in the soup, so I guess they use a combination of both.

It was delicious. Nothing fancy, but it certainly hit the spot.

The tiny kitchen cooks batches of noodles and then batches of macaroni so if you order one of each, it’s likely you’ll get one before the other.

The other notable “famous” item is the lemon crunchy toast (檸檬脆脆). That’s the literal translation. But we finally figured out it’s actually apricot jam and butter on toasted buns.

Oh, warm, melty butter and drippy jam. Very tasty.

Our first breakfast here for three people came out to just under HK$100 ($16 CAD). Yes, I said first. Because we kept getting drawn back. Three times.

On our last visit, we discovered one of the nicest public bathrooms in Hong Kong, just up the stairs behind the dai pai dong. Talk about handy!

It’s also one of the most fool-proof ways of finding this dai pai dong. Walk north on Hollywood Road. Follow the big sign for the public toilets. You’ll pass Aberdeen Road and turn right on Mee Lun Street. Sing Heung Yuen is at the very bottom of the stairs.

You could also come up the Mid-Levels escalator after which requires navigating through a few streets of vendors. In that case, look for the famous Ngau Kee Beef Restaurant (九記 牛腩） at 3 Gough Street because you’ll see its sign when you’re standing on Aberdeen. The dai pai dong is right across the street.

Or you could use Google maps I guess.

Sing Heung Yuen(勝香園), 2 Mee Lun Street (美轮街), Central, Hong Kong, 2544-8368. Open 8 a.m.-5:30 p.m., closed Sundays.