Hong Kong Tea, Coffee and Memories
This is a special guest post from a BetterBrew subscriber.
Bonzai shares her adventures in coffee from a recent trip she took to Hong Kong. And what an adventure it was… Enjoy!
Hong Kong - Thanks for the Tea, the Coffee and the Memories
I recently visited my home town, Hong Kong, for three weeks to see friends and relatives and tasted some local favourite specialty drinks again, as well as sampled some coffees made there to see how they fare with the ones I have in Cape Town.
Below is the list of tea drinks, tea & coffee drinks (yes, you read it right!) and coffees I tasted during the trip, in chronological order. I’ll provide pricing wherever possible, but I was treated to most of these drinks by family and friends. Note that at the time of the trip, the Rand – HK Dollar exchange rate was R2.40 = HK$1
1. Mocha Blend – Filter coffee in a bag by a Japanese specialty beverage manufacturer called Kunitaro.
2. Hong Kong-style Milk Tea
2.1 At Café de Coral (HK’s biggest local fast-food chain). Price:+$7 ≈ R16.80 for a meal set or +$13 ≈ R31.20 for the cold option. Sometimes the hot version is included in the meal set.
2.2 In a paper carton by Vita (HK’s largest non-carbonated beverage manufacturer)
3. Flat White at a Western-style Café and restaurant. Price: $44 ≈ R105.60!
4. “Yuen Yeung” (Chinese: 鴛鴦) – A mixture of tea and coffee at a done-up local-style café.
5. Iced Coffee at a Belgian pub and restaurant. Price: $38 ≈ R91.20
6. Coffee at an upmarket Western-style restaurant.
7. Flat White / Cappuccino at a 4-star hotel during tea time.
8. Short cappuccino in a lounge in Singapore’s Changyi Airport, prepared by an automatic coffee machine.
Let’s get into it…
MOCHA BLEND
Preparation was very easy. Secure the coffee bag on a regular tea/coffee cup (or mug as in below) with the cardboard handles, tear open the coffee bag at the perforation at the top, and slowly pour boiled water through the bag. I stopped pouring when I saw the coffee collected rose to the bottom of the bag. (I went a bit over in the below picture).
The taste: I was pleasantly surprised by how good it tasted. I could drink it neat without any milk and sugar. There was no bitterness nor burnt taste. I think this was the best drink I sampled out of the lot.
Hong Kong-style Milk Tea
Before I talk about how these drinks tasted, let me first provide some background information on the milk tea’s origins and an explainer about Café de Coral.
Café de Coral is the biggest fast-food chain in Hong Kong, founded in 1969. It serves a huge variety of fast food set meals throughout the day, ranging from Western meals to fusion and local-style set meals. The chain serves breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner set menus.
These images depict Making Milk Tea with a cloth sack and hot Milk Tea in a coffee cup served alongside a typical breakfast at local cafés and a cold HK-style Milk Tea
Photo credits for the above pictures: K. C. Tang, MK2010 and Shizhao, respectively on this page.
The origin of the famous HK-style milk tea dates back to the 1950s, at the time when HK was under British colonial rule, and Hong Kong was hugely influenced by the British tea culture. However, proper British tea was not affordable to the majority of the locals. So, the local eateries invented their own version of tea. The main ingredient is Ceylon / black tea (some even claimed to have used the famous Chinese tea leaves, The Pu’er), brewed and filtered through cloth sacks that resembled silk stockings once the sacks were stained by the tea. Hence, it is also called Silk Stocking Milk Tea. Evaporated milk or condensed milk is finally added instead of full cream milk. This drink is served throughout the day and can be served hot or cold. By the 1960s, milk tea had already become a staple drink served at local cafés (aka Cha chaan tengs lit. “tea restaurants” Chinese: 茶餐廳), along with food that was a fusion of Western and Eastern food, resulting in uniquely local dishes that were only available at these local cafés.
The brewing process is quite laborious, but this process allowed for maximum flavour extraction, as well as aeration of the tea to result in a richly flavoured drink with a silky smooth and full mouth feel.
Since then, the drink became so popular that in 2017, it was successfully entered into UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage. Nowadays, the drink is also made into bottled, canned, and paper-cartoned versions which can be purchased at supermarkets and convenience stores locally, in Asia, and overseas.
So now back to the tasting:
Vita HK-style milk tea (It said “made with Ceylon tea”)
2.1 Milk Tea at Café de Coral: Back in the 90s, the quality of their milk tea was on par with independent local cafés, even though their daily units sold was way higher than local cafés. However, this time I was disappointed. The tea was still strong in flavour, but it was not as silky smooth as it used to be. And the biggest problem was it was skimpy on milk. I had to ask for extra milk.
2.2 Milk Tea in a Carton by Vita: Vita is HK’s biggest local non-carbonated beverage manufacturer, founded by the same family who founded Café de Coral. The taste: I drank it at room temperature. It definitely tasted more fragrant and closer to what one would expect from a cup served at a local café, but of course, it is not freshly produced, and I didn’t want to check the ingredients (LOL), so I’m sure Vita’s put in quite a bit of flavouring in order to achieve the rich taste and smooth texture.
Flat white at a proper Western-Style Café and restaurant
According to the menu, their beans were single-origin roasted for espresso drinks from Brazil’s Santa Serra region. When I got the glass, I wasn’t very happy with the cap. The microfoam was not as well prepared as I had hoped; as you can see, there are quite a few bigger air bubbles visible.
The taste: It tasted okay. I’m not sure if I could taste the hazelnut flavour as stated in the menu, though. I guess with Brazilian single-origin beans for espresso, it’s hard to go wrong. All in all, it was nothing memorable and definitely not worth $44. I think it should be $40 max.
“Yuen Yeung” (Chinese: 鴛鴦)
A mixture of tea and coffee at a done-up local-style café. Explainer: The Yuen Yeung is another famous local specialty drink, which is a variant of the Milk Tea, where the main ingredients are brewed coffee mixed with black tea and evaporated milk. The locals usually put sugar in it, but I don’t. It is generally said that the ratio of coffee to tea is 3:7, but different local cafés’ recipes differ. It can be served hot or cold like Milk Tea.
This drink is my favourite local drink. I make the cheap version of it every day using black tea and instant coffee at home.
The taste: Perhaps I should have tasted the drink as soon as it arrived because the air con inside the Café was quite cold. (It’s summer there.) Instead, I was busy catching up with my friend for a while before I took my first sip. Again, I was disappointed. I could still taste the tea and coffee in it, but the fragrance of the tea wasn’t there. I suspected they had put in too much coffee. By the time I took my first sip, the drink was already getting cold, and it wasn’t silky smooth. The taste was strong but flat and almost bordered on slightly bitter. Alas, it was too cold for me to put any sugar in at this point, so I just gulped it down to finish it.
Iced coffee at a Belgian pub and restaurant
I’m a teetotaller, and because I was meeting up with friends for dinner at a Belgian pub and restaurant, and I was very hot from all the walking to get there, I decided to try an Iced Coffee. I didn’t have high expectations because I wasn’t at a proper coffee shop.
When it arrived, I realised that I should have ordered an Iced Mocha, which was the only other cold option. What I had in mind when I ordered the Iced Coffe, was the Iced Coffee we get served here in SA, with milk in it. What I got instead was as shown in the picture, with a small jug of syrup. The waitress almost started to pour the syrup in for me and I promptly stopped her.
I’m not sure if what was served is supposed to be called Iced Coffee, or is this supposed to be called an Iced Americano? At the time of this write-up, I did some more research, and I think this drink should more accurately be called a Brewed Iced Coffee.
The taste: Thanks to the ice, it didn’t taste as bitter as it would have been. So it was meh. As I’m a greenhorn coffee enthusiast, I lack the words to describe the drink. I couldn’t pick out any particular flavours, other than it was just an ordinary tumbler of cold coffee with ice in it. I eventually still poured a tiny bit of syrup into the drink.
Coffee at an upmarket Western-style restaurant
At my next outing at an upmarket Western restaurant that served set lunches, I decided to order a cup of coffee just to see what I’d end up getting. When I made my order, I didn’t realise then that the waiter didn’t ask me whether I wanted hot or cold milk with it, as one would expect here in SA.
The coffee arrived as pictured here. Note: it’s not an espresso, so I’m not sure what’s sitting at the top there. I was also quite sure that I saw them displaying Segafredo products, so I’m assuming they made my coffee using one of theirs. Also note: I’ve not tasted any of the Segafredo products before.
The taste: When it arrived, I took a sniff and could immediately smell something bitter, so I asked the waiter to give me hot milk because I knew it was going to taste bitter. I was right. I could not recall any specific flavours. Unfortunately, all I remembered was I definitely needed the hot milk to take away some of the bitterness, and I almost had to start adding sugar into the mix. It was definitely one of the worst drinks I tasted on the trip.
Flat White / Cappuccino at a 4-star hotel during tea time
As I had been sick and exhausted for the majority of the trip, I really couldn’t remember whether I ordered another Flat White or Cappuccino. I usually don’t like drinking Cappuccino because of too much milk to my preference, and I’m not quite there yet with drinking espresso, so my current espresso-based drink of choice is Flat White or Cortado. I had also forgotten to ask the waitress what beans they used to prepare the drink.
The taste: First, it looked like it was better prepared than the flat white I had earlier in the trip. The taste wasn’t spectacular, but it was also not bad either. I didn’t need to add sugar. If I had to do this in a cup that is served at a 4-star hotel, then this would be a real disappointment!
Short Cappuccino in a lounge in Singapore’s Changyi Airport, prepared by an automatic coffee machine
Thanks to Mum’s Business class ticket, which included her complimentary access to lounges at Singapore’s Changyi Airport, I was also given discretionary complimentary entry for our returning flight due to her immobility. As we were about to take a long-haul flight back to Cape Town, I didn’t want to overdo my caffeine intake, so I decided to try the automatic coffee machine’s Short Cappuccino. The machine is called Thermoplan from Switzerland, and the beans were roasted and supplied by a company called KolbCoffee.
The taste: It was disappointing. Again, it was one of the worst coffees I’ve had on the trip. Even with the milk and milk foam, I could still taste the bitterness of the coffee. So it’s probably the beans and/or the machines that were to blame.
In conclusion, perhaps being sick affected my coffee and tea tasting experience, but one thing I can be certain of, and this also applied to all the coffees I had during all the flights, was that all drinks were very skimp on milk and I’m really not sure if this has got to do with rising dairy production costs. All the drinks I tasted just didn’t taste as good as I had expected them to, especially the local specialty drinks. They were definitely not as well made as they used to be back in the 90’s or even in 00’s.
The coffees prepared by the baristas here in Cape Town definitely taste better than the ones I had in HK. I hope in my next trip there, I’ll get to specifically sample coffees at local specialty cafés, as well as visit authentic local-style cafés for properly made Milk Teas and Yuen Yeungs.
Bonzai
A BetterBrew subscriber with a love for coffee and coffee brewing.
