Hong Kong Food Collection

Hong Kong food culture runs on two speeds at once. There is the speed of the street — a bowl of wonton noodles finished in four minutes at a counter, a pineapple bun eaten walking, a paper cup of milk tea drunk before the light changes. And there is the slower speed of the round table, where families sit down at ten in the morning and are still there, teapot refilled twice, at half past one.

Few cities have compressed so many food traditions into so small a space. Cantonese cooking sits at the centre, but a century of trade, migration and British administration layered on café culture, curry houses, Shanghainese dumpling shops and bakeries selling egg tarts with a puff-pastry crust. The result is a kitchen that feels instantly recognisable and impossible to reduce to one dish.

Dim sum is Hong Kong's most exported ritual, but at home it is called yum cha — drinking tea. The food arrives as an accompaniment to it, stacked in bamboo steamers: har gow with translucent wrappers pleated at least seven times, siu mai open at the top, cheung fun rice rolls slippery with sweet soy, lo bak go turnip cake fried until the edges crisp, and char siu bao pulled apart to release sweet, lacquered pork.

The etiquette is quiet and generous. You pour for others before yourself; the person poured for taps two fingers on the table in thanks. The teapot lid is tipped open when it needs refilling. Nobody hurries anybody.

In the evening the open-air dai pai dong take over the side streets. These are cooking stalls with plastic stools and a burner powerful enough to produce wok hei — the smoky, almost mineral 'breath of the wok' that separates a restaurant plate of beef chow fun from a home one. Clams in black bean sauce, salt-and-pepper squid, stir-fried water spinach with fermented tofu, typhoon shelter crab under a blizzard of fried garlic.

Alongside them sit the cha chaan teng, Hong Kong's own hybrid cafés. Macaroni in broth for breakfast, French toast filled with peanut butter, baked pork chop rice, and silk-stocking milk tea — black tea pulled repeatedly through a fine cloth sock until it turns thick and smooth, then cut with evaporated milk.

Every neighbourhood has its bakery window of egg tarts, still warm, and its siu mei shop with roast goose, char siu and soy chicken hanging in the glass. A plate of roast meat over rice, with a spoon of the drippings and a small bowl of soup, is one of the great everyday meals anywhere in the world.

Late at night the noodle shops stay lit. Wonton noodles in a clear soup made from dried flounder and pork bone, beef brisket over flat rice noodles, congee simmered until the grains dissolve. Then a bowl of mango sago or tofu fa for the walk home.

Our Hong Kong collection gathers the icons of that neon-lit table — steamer baskets of har gow and siu mai, char siu, egg tarts, milk tea, wonton noodles and roast goose — into one illustrated composition that reads like a walk through the city at dinner time.

Every Hong Kong piece is printed and shipped through our Etsy shop: posters, aprons and kitchen pieces for anyone who has queued for a bakery window at four in the afternoon, or learned to tap two fingers on the table when the tea is poured.