Street hawkers vs food trucks: Hong Kong loses out again
Why wipe out your own street-food culture, as Hong Kong bureaucrats have relentlessly done, only to import a doubtless inferior version of someone else's, asks Susan Jung - who predicts all we'll see is McTrucks and Starbucks on wheels
The announcement in December that the Hong Kong government was going to allow food trucks to operate in "prime locations" made me ask, "What in the world are they thinking?" (My original words were not as polite.)
Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Greg So Kam-leung said that having food trucks would "increase and diversify Hong Kong's food choices," and assured us that "they won't compete with existing restaurants".
Once again, Hong Kong is trying to imitate something that's popular overseas rather than keeping its own heritage. There's no need to have food trucks (other than Mister Softee) when we have (or had, before the government cracked down on them) our own version of mobile food vendors: street hawkers. Che zai mian (cart noodles) used to be sold from actual carts, rather than from storefronts. Gai dan jai, waffles spread with peanut butter or condensed milk, curry fish balls, dragon's beard candy and chou doufu (stinky beancurd) all used to be available from street vendors, but now you have to buy them from shops. They're part of what made Hong Kong interesting, instead of one big shopping mall.
If I were a food-obsessed traveller (oh wait, I am!) trying to decide between the food trucks in New York or the food trucks in Hong Kong, I know which city I'd pick (hint: it's not the Big Lychee).
Do they really think that 12 food trucks are going to entice tourists into coming here? If I were a food-obsessed traveller (oh wait, I am!) trying to decide between the food trucks in New York or the food trucks in Hong Kong, I know which city I'd pick (hint: it's not the Big Lychee). Other cities are doing the food truck scene far better than the government plans for us, and if it's just making a token effort to be trendy and have what other cities have (think of our tiny harbourfront ferris wheel), then it's better not to do anything at all. Unless the food trucks offer fantastic food cooked up by top chefs - like the one earlier this year in Tokyo, by Michelin three-star Yoshihiro Narisawa (in which case it would be competing with existing restaurants) - what are they going to serve that can't be provided by street hawkers?
