the vegan side of hong kong

i was really happy to see my friend R again, and even got to stay at her flat in the city. that last time i saw her was almost precisely a year ago, only in london. i hope we meet up again next october! since my friend is mostly-vegetarian-sometimes-pescatarian, i was curious to see how she was faring in the land of chicken stock and pork filling. i was surprised to find that she was doing pretty well!


harvester is a vegetarian buffet joint close to R's flat. it just looks like a regular cafe with no eye-catching decor, aside from the smattering of health foods for sale that are sparsely displayed on some shelves. but the buffet is amazing! it is a little on the pricey side when compared to the local fare, but i think the extra money is worth it. you pay for the buffet by weight and then you can take as much soup or congee as you'd like. the offerings for that day were: fake pork in tofu, fake fishcake, fried asparagus, broccoli with fake chicken, and a stir-fry with fake squid. the consistency of the chicken and squid were almost too convincing, the chicken even had 'skin' and 'goosebumps.' well, i guess they would be chickenbumps.

harvester
shop a-b, yardley commercial building
3 connaught road west (sheung wan)
hong kong
tlf. 2542-4788


we had another epic lunch at life cafe, a hip vegetarian cafe that serves alcohol and filling meals along with coffee and cakes. english seemed to be the language of choice here, with all the expats that were milling about. R ordered the quesadilla in the lovely pink tortilla. i had the tempe burger, which was absolutely perfect! the tempe was cooked just enough so that i couldn't taste the fermented mushiness and the red onion relish gave a nice tang. the only thing i would have added was a bit more ketchup, but hey, i'm american. i needs my ketchups. and the service was so good already that i didn't want to bother them more. guess i've been living in copenhagen too long. (;

life cafe
10 shelley street (Soho)
hong kong
tlf. 2810 9777

sadly, that was about all the vegetarian food we ate in the two weeks i spent there, aside from the 3 times we cooked at her flat. kitchens are usually not so big in those hong kong high-rises, so people tend to eat out more. kind of nice, but also kind of sad. i really missed cooking while i was there!