Lina Forrestal

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Eating Adventures in Hong Kong

After living in Bangkok for two months, I was really excited to visit Hong Kong to see another big city in Asia. Hong Kong truly is a foodie city!  Most people come to Hong Kong and think dim sum. Although we didn’t actually eat any dim sum on this trip, we did have some truly amazing pizza . We start off this blog post at the Blue House Cluster at an awesome little vegan restaurant called Local Ginger. Then, we get an afternoon snack at Mammy Pancakes and then finish off the night at Mother of Pizzas. The next morning, we head to The Flying Pan for some brekkie. Are people still calling it “brekkie”? 

Blue House and Local Ginger

Hong Kong’s Blue House Cluster was built between 1922 and 1957. It consists of 3 government owned historic buildings: Blue House, Yellow House, and Orange House. It has now been revitalized into Viva Blue House. It’s located in the Wan Chai district of Hong Kong.

Save it to your Google maps here! 

Located at Blue House is a tiny vegan restaurant called Local Ginger. It was super easy to find. Local Ginger is within the Blue House cluster and is super cute with really friendly staff. Their goal is to connect the customers with the local community through food.  Sounds like a mission I could get behind!

We got the dry noodles and the veggie wonton noodle soup. I was a huge fan of the dry noodles! 

After you’re done eating, you can explore the rest of the Blue House cluster. They did a great job preserving and sharing the history of it. It was so fun exploring and walking room to room. It felt like we were in a video game! It gave me very Chrono Trigger-esque vibes. Each room was so different and had items from the recent past. Old typewriters, fax machines, telephones… they were arranged in such a way that made them feel symbolic. It’s funny how technology outdates itself so rapidly, so much that the recent future forgets where the all this technology started. I remember using a fax machine in my first internship in high school at the New York State Assembly – and I haven’t touched one since! 

Overall, visiting the Blue House cluster was different and worth it. It’s also a great place to take photos for Instagram  – the bright blue walls make a great backdrop!

Mammy Pancake

Our next foodie endeavor was Mammy Pancake.

We walked from Local Ginger to Mammy Pancake because we thought it would be a great way to see the city. By the time we got to Mammy Pancake, we were hoping for a cafe with air-conditioning  but instead, were greeted by a super tiny hole-in-the-wall – LOL! There is no seating at Mammy Pancake, but boy is it popular with locals. You have several options of pancake style and flavors. I opted for the matcha green tea flavored waffle with nutella and almonds. If there’s anything matcha and chocolate flavored, I’m there! 

We gobbled up our waffles as a dessert-before-dinner kind of thing, and then set off on our last foodie adventure towards Mother of Pizzas .

MOTHER OF PIZZAS 

Can we just talk about how amazing the name is? WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT!? I think if I could rename my blog to anything it would be Mother of Pizzas because l-i-t-e-r-a-l-l-y I am a Mother of Pizza. Pizza is my LIFE. I eat pizza at least once a week. It’s sad. Its beautiful. It’s everything to me. Okay, restaurant review time:

I literally danced into Mother of Pizzas because I was so excited and excitedly started talking to the owners – who are originally from Vancouver. They asked how we found the place – and honestly, it was by chance. We were riding in a taxi earlier and I saw the name and thought – we have to go back because I love Game of Thrones and I love pizza! It’s always the best places that you find by chance. You don’t go to Hong Kong and think about eating pizza – until now. 

Mother of Pizzas is low-key super popular. It was a Tuesday night and there was a line out the door! It’s packed inside, and I bet on the weekends it’s more wild than a wildling. It has a great, trendy ambiance: jet-black subway tile, dark wood tables, as if a badass Italian grandmother decorated the place. The crust is Neopolitan style and their toppings are New York style. They’re not afraid to be creative BECAUSE THE MOTHER OF PIZZAS BOWS TO NO ONE. They let their dough rise for 36 hours, which results in a super crispy and flavorful crust. The staff crafts each pizza by hand, made-to-order, with love and precision. Another important takeaway: the staff was all really happy and proud to be there. I believe that when the people who are cooking your food are genuinely happy, you can taste it. Like a mothers love. Like when your mother used to cook you meals, you can feel the love in each bite. Mother of Pizzas is everyone’s mother now.

The Flying Pan

The next day, we were craving an American style breakfast and luckily there was a diner not too far from our hotel called The Flying Pan.  Hehe, cute name!

It was a Wednesday around noon, and it seems like brunch is a popular thing in Hong Kong everyday of the week! The Flying Pan has a lot of cute neon signs, they are definitely aiming towards a 1950s Americana style diner . I got the eggs benedict with avocado, salsa, a fried tomato, and corn grits. John ordered the huevos rancheros. There is a great variety of eggs benedict if you’re an eggs benedict fan! 

After all was set and done and we ordered milkshakes, coffee, and split a grilled cheese, our final bill was $453 HKD which comes out to about $57 USD. They accept credit cards, which is fantastic. One of the things we noticed about Hong Kong in comparison to Bangkok is that food is far more expensive in Hong Kong! 

That’s it for what we ate in Hong Kong – we were busy scrambling between the Thai Embassy and our hotel and honestly starved most of the day or stuffed snacks from 7/11 in our faces 

I hope that we go back to Hong Kong so that we can visit Macau. That was somewhere I really wanted to visit because my dad was born there, but we just didn’t have the time in between our embassy trips.

Thanks for reading! 

ps. Watch the YouTube Video of my foodie adventures in Hong Kong:

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