A far cry from sweet and sour: Hong Kongers bring their food to the UK

Hong Kongers fleeing a political crackdown in their home city are the biggest wave of migrants to settle in Britain since the Windrush generation arrived from the Caribbean — and they’re bringing their food with them. 

While previous generations of Chinese immigrants would gravitate towards Chinatowns in London and Manchester to make and sell dim sum or roast Cantonese duck to local diners, this cohort is bringing an updated menu of Hong Kong food that offers fellow migrants a nostalgic taste of home.

Instead of being concentrated in inner city areas like their forerunners, the nearly 200,000 holders of the British National Overseas passport are making use of a lifeboat visa program to fan out across the country, from Sutton in Surrey, to Brick Lane and Canary Wharf in East London, to affordable neighborhoods in Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester.

They’re even growing their own vegetables in their backyards instead of relying on the fresh foods available through chains of Asian foods wholesalers.

The Hong Kong food stall with the longest line of waiting diners at a weekend food market in the Canary Wharf financial district in early June 2024 offers salt beef tripe, brisket and tendon braised Hong Kong style, attracting a mixed crowd of expectant customers.

For some, it’s the taste of home, and for others raised on typical fare from earlier British Hong Kong takeaways, it’s a far cry from sweet and sour chicken balls.

“Food has always been an important part of the way that immigrant communities construct their identities,” says Hong Kong columnist Carpier Leung. “I have high hopes for the influence that this wave of immigration can have on Hong Kong cuisine.”

The new wave is already breaking on British shores.

Over the past two years, more supermarkets have started selling packages of dim sum like har gau shrimp dumplings and char siu pork buns, while Hong Kong-style egg tarts and the city’s signature mix of strong black tea with evaporated milk have started popping up in trendy cafes in areas where Hong Kongers have congregated.

You can buy street snacks like egg waffles and French toast, Hong Kong diner (or cha chaan teng) style, in Sutton and Manchester these days.

Dreams of Mong Kok

Nicole, who founded the Hong Kong nostalgia restaurant HOKO in Brick Lane, said she was drawn to the area because its grittiness and trendiness reminded her of Kowloon’s Mong Kok district. 

That was home to the “fishball revolution” of 2016 when disgruntled young people — some of them supporters of the city’s independence movement — ripped up paving bricks from the area’s narrow shopping streets and hurled them at police.

The first thing you see when you walk into HOKO is a row of evaporated milk tins used by cha chaan teng, with their distinctive red-and-white packaging. The next is the diner-style layout with high-backed, partitioned seating of the kind where low-paid office workers would rub shoulders with blue-collar workers in search of an affordable breakfast or set lunch deal.

The tables are stacked with orange melamine chopsticks, with menus in glass cases, throwbacks to Nicole’s memories of these eateries that date back to the 1960s and ‘70s in her home city. Cantopop by Justin Lo is blaring from the speaker system, while posters of Hong Kong bands bedeck the walls.

“We sell Hong Kong food that tells a story,” she says, listing milk tea, French toast, pork chop, Swiss chicken wings and borscht, all staples of cha chaan teng — food that arrived in a global free port from somewhere else, only to acquire a peculiarly Hong Kong twist, making it quite unlike the original.

“Swiss chicken wings” was the result of a miscommunication between English-speaking tourists and Hong Kong chefs, who heard “Swiss” when the customer said “sweet,” according to HOKO’s menu. Milk tea was brought in during British colonial times and persisted long after British tea-drinkers had forgotten all about evaporated milk.

Nicole thinks the latest generation of migrants from Hong Kong is “braver, and truer to ourselves and to Hong Kong cuisine.”

Telling the difference

Another Hong Kong eatery in east London, Aquila, has directly imported some of its ingredients from Hong Kong to ensure its dishes remain authentic. 

“We have to insist on that authenticity so that British people will be able to tell the difference between Hong Kong and China [when it comes to food],” says co-founder Lucas.

The first thing you see when you walk into this joint is a political statement — the flags of British Hong Kong and the Republic of China, currently located in democratic Taiwan, alongside photos from the 2019 protest movement against the loss of Hong Kong’s promised freedoms that would land a person in hot water back home, under two national security laws.

But the founders don’t worry much about annoying China, which took back control of Hong Kong in 1997 and still insists on a territorial claim on Taiwan.

“I’m running a British business — what is there to be afraid of?” says Lucas. “My grandfather’s business was ruined by the Chinese Communist Party, and my family has been anti-communist ever since.”

“I hope that customers will ask why these things are on display, so I can tell them the story of Hong Kong,” he adds.

Chicken hotpot

Not all food translates easily, however. Hong Kongers have developed a passion in recent years for a local form of chicken hotpot. But Hong Kong migrant and entrepreneur Sam says he doesn’t think the dish has taken off with British diners, who prefer their chicken boneless and not floating around in scalding hot soup.

Sam started Lulu Chicken Pot, a business selling hotpot soup base, chicken nuggets and spicy sauce, but orders fell off sharply in the second year, and he was unable to pay the #3,000 (US$3,925) a month rent on his kitchen.

“It doesn’t matter how many Hong Kongers you have following you on your Facebook page,” he says. “It’s not the same as reaching tens of millions of consumers in the U.K.”

In New Malden, south London, organic farmer Wong Yu-wing is growing vegetables that Hong Kongers love to eat, but which aren’t widely available in British stores.

He also partners with the local government to grow his vegetables in public spaces, as well as selling seeds and seedlings to other Hong Kong migrants who want to start their own vegetable plots.

But the shadow of China still looms large in many people’s lives, even on British soil.

The Hong Kong March cultural festival now in its second year has seen a sharp fall in participating businesses, which organizer and former pro-democracy District Councilor Carmen Lau says is likely linked to the chilling effect of bounties and arrest warrants placed by national security police on the heads of overseas democracy activists last year, including several based in the United Kingdom.

At the same time, funding from the U.K. government has been cut or canceled, leaving several groups representing Hong Kongers in the lurch financially, she says.

‘Milk tea alliance’

Nonetheless, food and drink is still bringing Hong Kongers together.

In Reading, a town to the west of London, the local Hong Kongers’ group holds a Hong Kong market every month.

Stallholder and former pro-democracy politician Wilber Lee sells milk tea, while displaying photos from the 2019 protests. His “Double Price For Drinks Only” stall is popular, and customers line up to get their brew.

It’s as much a political statement as a hot beverage.

“A lot of people know me and come to support me by buying my milk tea,” Lee says, adding that his stall’s branding is largely aimed at Hong Kongers, and is a humorous nod to the way cha chaan teng diners would charge double for drinks if customers didn’t buy food.

Lee’s product is deliberately aligned with the “milk tea alliance” of pro-democracy protesters across several East Asian nations, who routinely support each other online and face down the army of pro-Beijing commentators known as the “little pinks.”

He sees himself as continually engaged in the struggle to make Hong Kong free again.

“Everything I do now is to prepare for that day,” he says.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.