Cha Chaan Teng in Hong Kong

What is your favorite restaurant on campus? For me, Hong Kong Noodle is my favorite restaurant. They have really authentic food and make me feel like home. For example, the minced beef and scramble egg with rice, fried squid, and Wonton Soup are something I always order. However, these are only tip of the iceberg. Known as the “Food Paradise”, Hong Kong cuisine is almost influenced by all over the world due to the fact that it has a long history of being an international city. Therefore, you can choose from a wide variety of food when you visit Hong Kong. Among all kinds of food, I think Cha Chaan Teng is one of the most popular foods in Hong Kong because it really reflects our culture in different ways. The history of Cha Chaan Teng explains why high efficiency is one of the main cultures of Hong Kong. In the early Hong Kong, the British opened high-class restaurants in the city that provided western food and they did not welcome Chinese to get in. It is also a luxury expense. Therefore, not a lot of local people know how western food taste like. In the 1930s, Hong Kong culture was influenced by British culture and they started to like drinking tea with milk and sugar and eating cakes, but they are only available for British or wealthy people with high social status. In order to challenge such discrimination, local people decided to open their own restaurants serving affordable Western food, which is known as Cha Chaan Teng. It literally means Tea Café or Tea Restaurant. According to Daisann McLane’s article in the New York Times, he describes this as a “classic, 1950s-60s style coffee shop diner. Think Howard Johnson’s, Horn and Hardart, or the original Denny’s, but with Chinese chefs in the kitchen”. Finally, this kind of restaurant slowly developed a culture of fast service and high efficiency in Hong Kong during the post-war industrial boom, because factory workers only had short breaks, and they needed to eat cheap and fast. Customers normally receive their