Hong Kong’s most Instagrammable dishes
Hong Kong is one of the world’s great food cities. But it’s also one of the world’s great tech-equipped cities ­– on average, each Hongkonger owns two and a half mobile phones. The main confluence of these two realities? Instagram, naturally. Little wonder – the city is packed full of delicious, photogenic delights. So grab your phone and remember the one immutable Hong Kong rule: the camera always, always eats first.
The Night Wolf, Oddies Foodies
Oddies’s twist on a classic street snack.
The humble egg puff, or eggette, is a classic Hong Kong street snack: waffle batter poured into oval moulds, flipped halfway through cooking to create a crispy shell surrounding a soft interior. They’re phenomenal as is, and absolutely worth trying in their natural state: but Oddies has taken this time-honoured snack and forged something new and Insta-ready. The Night Wolf (HK$63/£6) combines chocolate chip egg puffs with soft-serve gelato, dark chocolate, caramelised banana ice-cream and passion fruit panna cotta. The dessert is tart, creamy, crisp, soft, warm and cold all at once – and unquestionably Instagrammable. If that doesn’t grab you, there are always new flavours in development, such as cookies and cream egg puffs, or apricot and cream gelato mixed with coconut macaroons and candied cashews. As a bonus, the shop sits on Gough Street in Central: one of the city’s most photogenic lanes.
Hot custard buns, Yum Cha
The flowing custard, or lava custard, bun is a dim sum favourite in Hong Kong: a soft bun filled with a rich, salted duck egg custard that oozes out as you bite in, inevitably scalding the tongue. But Yum Cha has a very modern take on this classic dish (HK$49/£4.70 for three). You’re not normally meant to play with your food, but at Yum Cha they’ve added adorable googly eyes to each bun, and you’re encouraged to take a chopstick, poke a hole where the mouth would be ­– and squeeze, so that the custard oozes out of the gob of your little bun friend. It’s more adorable that it sounds. Yum Cha has several more photogenic offerings, including barbecued pork buns made to look like little piggies (HK$49/£4.70 for three).
Charcoal custard buns, Social Place
Charcoal-infused dough, brushed with a gold stripe.
Insta-ready buns go up a level at Social Place, where beauty triumphs over novelty. Witness its steamed charcoal custard buns (HK$49/£4.70 for three), made with a jet-black charcoal-infused dough and brushed with a stunning stripe of gold. The filling is just as golden, if you can bring yourself to rip open these works of art. Equally delicious are the truffle shiitake buns (HK$49/£4.70 for three), which aren’t just rich in truffle aromas and mushroom meatiness: their artfully cracked tops look exactly like shiitake mushrooms.
Bubble tea, Flamingo Boom
Flamingo Boom: mix-and-match Insta hits. Photograph: Flamingo Boom
This iced milk tea, with its chewy tapioca balls – also known as boba pearls – has been an instant Instagram hit. But social media is fickle and soon tires of the same-old, same-old bubble tea shots. Enter Flamingo Boom, which tempts the fatigued photographer with a mix-and-match range of floral teas to which you can add everything from fresh fruit to boba pearls, or a salted milk topping for a touch of contrast. Go for the Taiwanese oolong tea with rose and boba pearls (HK$36/£3.50), or a disconcertingly green matcha latte bubble tea (HK$39/£3.80). And for the final touch? Flamingo Boom was built from the ground up for Instagram, and its adorable little flamingo cupholder floaties guarantee you’ll be in double-tap triple figures.
Hot pot, The Drunken Pot
Hot pot – in which diners dip meat, veg and fishballs into bubbling bowls of soup stock – is inherently Instagrammable. But no pot in Hong Kong is quite as suited to social media as the eponymous hotpot at The Drunken Pot (HK$328/£32). This contains five different soup bases, including a tomato lobster soup, beef brisket broth, and a numbingly spicy Sichuan soup, all in a single hot pot. In addition, your dunking ingredients have been designed to be equally photogenic: from the cuttlefish balls in seven colours to the multi-hued soup dumplings, and the fish balls shaped (rather troublingly) to look like penguins. Thankfully, the taste backs up the novelty value – especially when it comes to the sliced Angus beef chuck (from HK$188/£18), which comes draped on its own rack above a box of ice.