Hong Kong Cafe Meals: Ham, Egg, Instant Noodles with Milk Tea

One of the ubiquitous eating places in Hong Kong is the Cha Chaan Teng – 茶餐厅 (Hong Kong Tea Restaurant).  It is known for its affordable menus offering a wide variety of dishes e.g. Hong Kong cuisine and Hong Kong-style Western cuisine (Canto-Western Cuisine).  It is something like Singapore’s kopi-tiam except that it specialises in the above-mentioned meals and the staple drink here is tea – hot, cold, with or without milk; there is a wide variety available.

Located just a few minutes from our Stanford Hong Kong hotel lies a number of such eateries.  We decided to have our breakfast here because it had the very traditional Cha Chaan Teng feel i.e. a 4-6 seater wooden booth with drawers filled with all the utensils and serviettes you need for your meal.

I ordered Yi Ding Mien (Instant Noodles) sets which come with luncheon meat and toast.  Introduced in Cha Chaan Teng in the 1980s, instant noodles usually come with canned food like luncheon meat or pork cubes, or with other kinds of meat. It can be served dry or with soup.

Pork Chop Noodles Set (with Ham & Egg & Toast)

Being a typical value-conscious Singaporean, my first instinct would be to think “Yao mo gao chor ah” (Cantonese for ‘You must be mistaken’) – coming all the way to Hong Kong and paying the equivalent of about S$4 for Maggi Mee?!?!

Oh well, you know what they say about “When in Rome, do as Romans do”.  Yi Ding Mien sets with toast and milk tea is also part of the authentic Hong Kong Tea Cafe experience. 

The set meal was of good value because of the variety of ham, egg, toast + the instant noodles with pork chop.  I was kept quite busy trying to multi-task between each item. 

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