Travel|FARE OF THE COUNTRY; Hong Kong's Lively Sizzling Dishes
Advertisem*nt
SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
Supported by
SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT
FARE OF THE COUNTRY
By Barbara Basler
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
IT stands to reason that the bustling, flamboyant little colony of Hong Kong, which loves to call attention to itself and its success, would invent an exuberant restaurant dish that also demands attention and admiration. That specialty is a sizzling dish, and whenever it is served here, even the most jaded diners turn to stare, because these noisy, lively dishes simply cannot be ignored.
It begins when the waiter brings in fish or meat on a metal platter that has been heated to a fiendish temperature, places the platter of food in the middle of the table and douses it with sauce. When the liquid hits the hot platter, it sizzles loudly and then releases a big cloud of pungent smoke. In Hong Kong almost anything can wind up on a sizzling platter, but most often the dish is beef, mutton or prawns.
Most restaurants that serve these dishes warn Westerners to cover their faces with their napkins to avoid the thick smoke -- you hold the napkin in front of your face and nose and peer over it, which local Chinese seem to do automatically. If the sizzling platter is particularly large, or the tables especially close, nearby diners will hold up their napkins for protection as well, and the room begins to resemble a gang of outlaws dining on their way to work.
"People here like the sizzling dishes because they taste good and they massage the ego," said Stephen Wong, a food writer for the Chinese- language magazine Ming Pao. "A sizzling dish makes a big, bombastic noise, and wraps you in a cloud of smoke and everyone turns to look at you and your table."
These are not haute cuisine dishes ordered to impress wealthy relatives or important business associates. These are fun dishes ordered by families and friends enjoying a good time and treating themselves to something a bit special.
Chinese restaurants here are some of the noisiest in the world yet a true sizzling dish can be heard halfway across the room, over the clatter of dishes and the loud, lively conversation of Cantonese diners.
Advertisem*nt
SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT
