Sometimes when you go to a new city on your travels, it can be tempting to stick to restaurants and cafes listed in your guidebook. It’s also tempting to make initial judgments based on the exterior appearance of a place, which is a shame because inside the food can be even better than that of the “posh” restaurants listed on Tripadvisor etc.

For this reason, we decided before leaving for Hong Kong to go on a foodie tour with Hong Kong Foodie Tours.

We met at a part of town we hadn’t yet been to (Sham Shui Po), which was interesting in itself. It was a more traditional part of Hong Kong and a far cry from the shiny skyscraper-dominated area of Central.

Our friendly guide introduced herself and we set off for the first location. The first café was a humble little place called Kowloon Restaurant where the menu was listed only in Cantonese. We tried a traditional Hong Kong breakfast bun, colloquially called a pineapple bun.

The baked bun in all its glory – so good!

There is no pineapple in the bun; the top of the warm bun has a mixture of sugar, egg and butter on it, and when baked it cracks to form the look of a pineapple!

Pineapple buns ready for baking

The bun was delicious and arguably the highlight of the entire tour! Needless to say we soon had a new Hong Kong breakfast food to look out for for the rest of our stay.

After this, we were taken for a different sort of breakfast sampling to a café that we would never have considered going into on our own. Packed with locals, it was an unassuming place where there didn’t even seem to be a menu.

We ate rice noodles which came with a peanut sauce. This wasn’t quite to my taste, but for others on the tour it proved to be their highlight! It was interesting to experience breakfast how the locals do it.

Rice noodles with peanut sauce

Next up, a bit of a walk around town, including a description of the architecture and various other interesting bits of info we would not have found out otherwise. Our tour guide (Fiona) was really lovely and happy to answer all of our questions.

We came across a stall selling tofu dessert and soybean milk. We tried both and although again not really to our tastes, it was intriguing to try a Hong Kong dessert and traditional drink in such a setting.

Next up was another highlight: braised goose and pork knuckle at another small café called Lu Goose Restaurant. The goose here was melt in the mouth in texture, and served with rice vinegar and plain rice. The pork was also delicious but it was the goose that stole the show on this occasion.

Amazing goose and pork!

Feeling quite full, we had a bit of a break before heading to a local bakery for some walnut cookies and almond cookies, and then it was time for the final dish of the day in a restaurant famous with locals in Hong Kong.

Lau Sum Kee Noodle Shop sells egg noodles with shrimp roe and was packed to the rafters about five minutes after opening for the day. The bowl of noodles presented to us was topped with shrimp roe, which although quite strong for us, became a different entity entirely when topped with some fiery chilli sauce!

The Hong Kong Foodie Tour was one of the best things we did on our trip. It combined walking around an old part of town with eating amazing food and trying new things, and comes highly recommended to anyone visiting this city, foodie or non-foodie.