Three of the best places to eat in Hong Kong’s Yuen Long district – think old-fashioned dishes and value
- A 40-minute ride from Central, the New Territories town offers old-style dishes made the traditional way; Yuen Long native Gloria Chung shows us around
- Michelin-garlanded Ho To Tai’s bamboo pole noodles and dumplings are hard to beat, Tai Tung’s cakes are tempting, and there’s a famous herbal jelly shop
When food writer and stylist Gloria Chung Wing-han says she is from the far-flung Hong Kong district of Yuen Long, people unfamiliar with the area have been known to ask her: “Do you have cows?”
“I reply, ‘No’. I live in an apartment,” she says, exasperated at the perception of Yuen Long as a farming community where residents live in mud huts.
If they made the 40-minute journey from the Central business district on Hong Kong Island, they would see that Yuen Long is a mini metropolis where old and new exist side by side.
The railway station is next to Yoho Mall, a shopping centre with H&M and Zara clothing boutiques, and even a Venchi Italian chocolate shop, and a residential complex above. Just outside the mall is Chung’s former secondary school, Kei Yuen College, alongside other older buildings. As a long-time Yuen Long resident, and a foodie, Chung is amply qualified to guide us on a culinary tour of the area. She usually takes friends for a bite to eat at one of her six favourite spots. Today we try three of them.
“This used to be what they called gei dei, literally ‘chicken land’, where they used to raise chickens,” she explains, but obviously that was decades ago, and possibly when the last cows wandered the area.
The history of Yuen Long, in the northwestern New Territories, dates back to the Qin dynasty (221-207BC). In the market town of Yuen Long San Hui, villagers traded in farm produce and fish. The hub of activity shifted in 1669 to where the Yuen Long MTR station is now.