Finer Points: Eating in Hong Kong

Here are some things that you may find different when eating in Hong Kong, as compared to eating in the Philippines:

1. If you have an issue with the overall hygiene of Chinese restaurants, take heart in the fact that the people in Hong Kong do too. Matter of fact, they even integrated it in their tradition, with the washing of utensils with tea water a part of their more formal merienda-style meals.

2. People in Hong Kong prefer hot drinks with their hot meals. They claim it's to foster better digestion. Even if it's hot outside, hot in the restaurant, and the world is burning. They'd still serve you hot water just because.

3. Hong Kong serves one of the largest food portions per meal in Asia. Surprisingly, they also have very low obesity rates, proving once and forall that exercise and genetic metabolism > diet. Try living in a city built over hills, mountains, and sometimes, what feels like vertical ravines. Anything you eat's bound to be burnt up after a walk "around the block"

4. People don't remove trays when they eat, unlike Filipinos who generally view trays as dirty items. Like Filipinos though, HK people aren't used to cleaning up after their own meals either.

5. Speaking of cleaning up, unlike in the Philippines, it's actually rude in their culture to leave dirty dishes on the table after everybody's eating, so the cleaners will literally clean shit up the moment you stop chewing and moving around your food. (Happens to me a lot when I get chatty). As for our case, we take it as a personal insult when somebody removes our plate even if we've been done eating for the last three hours, and are just mooching off table rights and airconditioning.

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