We Tried the Most Famous Street Seafood in Hong Kong | Street Food Tour with Lucas Sin | Bon Appétit

you just got here early Sun still up people aren't quite here yet but the kitchen just started cranking so let's see what they're cooking at what about some seafood is what we call a Dai Pai dong which literally translates to Big licensed stall they make this thing we call Sea Tao small stir fries they specialize in fresh seafood huge amount of seasoning big aromatics high octane cooking always absorbing neocultural influences serving a huge amount of people so we're in the district a neighborhood called shamshe po shamshepo is known for a lot of manufacturing a lot of textiles and this type of eating was sort of blue collar and Democratic and all over the place everyone from Every sector Society all over Hong Kong will descend on places like this because you get a drink cold beer eat hot food all four seasons because of the history the push and pull there aren't that many Thai padongs left in Hong Kong they're probably only around about 20 of these guys left you three different stories some people might say there used to be 700 that used to be 2 000 there used to be 3 000 point is as wonderful as this place is a little bit of a rare sight these are really traditional old school types of restaurants in Hong Kong where government gave people licenses to cook on the street now the government doesn't to these licenses anymore which means that the only way to keep cooking at a place like this is to transfer that license from a friend to a friend or from one generation to the Next Generation so this license they've held on to for 60 years as a result these guys are guys who are operating it they're not the owners of the license but they're The Operators of the restaurant the way it's set up is based on lines this Chef's job here what you might call a garmange is to put together these little bowls of ingredients that are then passed off to the walk station so that all the walk-eyes need to do is cook it and then put it on top of a plate whatever the chef needs for the dish that's the guy that's going to put it all together on the right hand side is the seafood butcher it's going to butcher clean and prepare all the seafood to order all the seafood fresh comes in every single day [Music] these tanks are all live fish you get palm fruit you have dong sengban and crabs as well and that's what we're going to ask Chef to make this is crab that's known for its flesh it's kill to order chopped up split up butchered in the middle are Two Chefs each with their own walks they specialize in their own dishes right hand side tend to be the slightly more complicated oftentimes seafood dishes left hand side a lot more sauces and vegetables stir fries everything they need is an exact Arm's Reach they share a seasoning station in the middle that has all the things that eat boys or sauce salt sugar MSG chili oil chili paste the chefs don't even need to see the order once they see the ingredient hit the table they know what dish they have to make all the chef needs to focus on is cooking to bring everything together oh my God that was like four or five tosses 15 20 seconds no joke [Music] when you're stir frying if you toss something into the air then when it's in the air because of how hot that Wok is it stops cooking when it touches I walk again it's hot again so it's cooking only by conduction so as a tosses and tossing and tosses it's like it's it just gets seared and seared and seared all over again that temperature reaches 400 plus degrees it goes through the mired reaction and all those sugars inside of those ingredients starts to caramelize there's a sweetness Umami all of that starts to be expressed the wall Cooks will finish the cook in a matter of minutes if not seconds once that hot food is done it's going to come out right in the middle where the servers will pick those plates up and bust them directly to the tables now because this is not a regular Chinese restaurant inside the government gives them a license that's been grandfathered in to cook with kerosene kerosene oh my God okay that's a secret kerosene makes this extra extra hot you can't get stove tops this hot in Hong Kong anymore in Hong Kong restaurants don't really take tips so if you were a restaurateur you ran restaurants and you wanted to make a little bit more money the key is to serve more people that's where this essence of speed comes in it's all about a brutalist sort of efficiency right the tables here span the entire block and honestly there's a type of freedom and do whatever you want Spirit the number of tables are in this restaurant that they can serve is dependent on where the cars are parked today unfortunately for them as you can see somebody else parked the car right where these folding tables and these plastic stools are supposed to be so sat down for dinner a bunch of friends came with us we're gonna get some Dai Pai dong food yeah boss lady said I think they do at least three or four turns here at night the funny thing is she has no idea how many people she serves a night which I'm sure she knows how much money she's making Taiwan this is my favorite dish this is the dish you order to test the walk technique of the chef very familiar Clay Pot oh my goodness you can't stop when you get to describe food in studio they can talk through all the ingredients if you have time but here everything happens so fast it's like sports casting you have to like and you have to like start Okay Thai food shelter crab look at this are you joking are you joking that's a whole claw no joke it's so hot you want those like earthy almost burnt chili crisp cones right at the end but at the top you want that bright Sparks of that small dried bird's eye chili and the fresh pepper don't really taste that much but that's mostly there for color I think so much about that on cooking is about style and here Chef is trying to address all those layers of heat I'm just sitting here and for the next two minutes I'm going to be tasting that crab okay the first time I came to ointment was seeing Chef off in the distance when you walk into this restaurant space you walk down the middle of the road and in this kitchen all you see are his bright yellow shorts flapping in the Wind Chef has four arms of a walk God nothing stops him no heat no fire no injury because he's the coolest dude in all of Hong Kong [Music] cheers thank you for coming [Applause] okay okay let's get out of here ciao I took it okay thank you

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 641,674

Keywords: best food in hong kong, best seafood hong kong, best street food, best street food hong kong, bon app, bon appetit, bon appetit hong kong, chef lucas sin, chinese seafood, dai pai dong, food, hong kong cuisine, hong kong dai pai dong, hong kong food, hong kong seafood, hong kong street food, hong kong streetfood, lucas sin, oi man sang, oi man sang hong kong, seafood dai pai dong, seafood stall, street eats, street food hong hong

Id: ivaf-hCu9dM

Length: 7min 56sec (476 seconds)

Published: Mon May 29 2023