The Eskimos, so they say, have 12 different words for snow. Well, in Hong Kong, we have a dozen or more ways to say: Eat Here!

The variety of Cantonese words that mean “place to eat” is pretty amazing. Jau ga, jau lau, sihk sat, mihn sik, chaan teng, cha chaan teng. Years ago, when I was studying Cantonese in New York’s Chinatown, I remember how bewildered I was by it all. “But Mr. Wen,” I would ask my septuagenarian teacher from Canton, “The lesson book says that a jau ga is a restaurant. But then it says jau lau also means restaurant?

“Yes, same,” Mr. Wen sighed patiently.

So, then, what about the chaan teng, I’d ask him. And the mihn sihk and mihn gaare these restaurants, too?

“Yes,” he would nod, “Also restaurants.”

By this point, feeling like the dimmest student on the planet, I’d stop with the questions. For years, I believed that the Cantonese language had numerous ways to say “restaurant”, all of them more or less interchangable.

Then I moved to Hong Kong.

Where I discovered that Hong Kong has as many different types of eateries as there are Cantonese words to describe them. And that a Hong Konger knows exactly how and why a jau ga is different from a sihk sat and what you’re going to find on the menu of a dai paai dong, and on the menu of a tihm baan sihk. Slowly, meal by meal, I’ve picked up the cultural lingo that was missing in my language textbook.

Twin Ducks in a Teacup: Hong Kong’s yun yeung coffee-tea Credit Daisann McLane

Case in point: the comfort food heart of Hong Kong, the cha chaan teng.

The Hong Kong cha chaan teng is a classic, 1950s-60s style coffee shop diner. Think Howard Johnson’s, Horn and Hardart, or the original Denny’s, but with Chinese chefs in the kitchen. The menu is like an anthropological record of Hong Kong’s post-war manufacturing boom. Factory workers had short breaks, and needed to eat cheap, and fast, away from home. They also had a bit of disposable income to spend on the novelty of “Western” foods (that were re-interpreted by clever chefs to please a Cantonese palate).

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Although you certainly can eat breakfast, lunch or dinner at a cha chaan teng, it is really a place where you go to satisfy those itchy, in-between meal food cravings. 11 am and 3 to 5 pm are the classic cha chaan teng hourswhen you absolutely must have that pork chop, fried in black pepper sauce, perched atop a little hill of overcooked spaghetti (In Cantonese, jyuh pa yi mihn). When nothing else will do but a slab of airy white bread toast slathered with bricks of butter, garnished with condensed milk. Or a bowl of soup filled with instant noodles and rubbery fish balls.

Accompanied, of course, by the cha chaan teng’s piece de resistance: the milk tea, or naai cha.

If Hong Kong had an “official” drink, this would be it: the thick, intense and creamy brew of black tea and evaporated milk, boiled and then strained through cloth (some places still use the traditional ladies’ silk stocking). You can also order it chilled. If you’re not fond of milk, try a lemon tea (leng cha), a Lipton-style brew which comes with five or six slices of real lemon.

Or, join me in my favorite cha chaan teng concoction, the yun yeung . This is a strange bird of a drink. Quite literally so. It’s a hot blend of coffee and black tea, which sounds yucky but tastes like a match made in heaven. The name of the drink comes from the Cantonese words “yun” and “yeung”, which mean the male and female Mandarin duck. According to the legend, when the ducks meet, they mate for life.

You’ve probably figured out by now that the cha chaan teng is not serving up fine cuisine but comfort food, liberally seasoned with memories, and powerful emotions. How powerful? Well, once, sitting on a stool in the wonderfully funky Fo Gei cha chaan teng on Tai Ping Shan road in Sheung Wan, sipping my yun yeung while chatting with a guy taking his bird for a walk, I had an extraordinary epiphany: I felt nostalgia for a culture that is not my own.

Imagine, then, what kind of emotional power the cha chaan teng holds in this fast-moving, impermanent city where at any moment, your favorite street, building, or neighborhood may disappear on the real-estate chopping block A month or two ago, one of Hong Kong’s legislators actually proposed a motion to encourage the government to get the cha chaan teng on UNESCO’s “intangible cultural heritage” list.

The Fo Gei cha chaan teng in Sheung Wan Credit Daisann McLane

Even Donald Tsang, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, has declared, in an open letter to the public, that he “loves popping into a cha chaan teng for some beef brisket noodles and naai cha.”

But let’s cut to the chase. You have three days, maybe a week in Hong Kong, and you want to experience the cha chaan teng for yourself. Where should you go?

Well, almost anywhere! Hong Kong has thousands of little mom-and-pop cha chaan tengs like my favorite little haunt, the Fo Gei.

However, if you want to visit a giant, super-sized neon version of Hong Kong’s humble coffee shop cafes, you should head to Tsui Wah on Wellington Street, which is open 24 hours. But the time to turn up is between 2 and 4am, because that’s the time when Hong Kong’s most beautiful people, models, Canto-pop starts and celebutantes, will be there, itching their scratch for naai cha and peanut butter toast in-between bouts of club-hopping. Don’t forget to order Tsui Wah’s specialty, the Hainan Chicken Rice.

And if you see Donald Tsang in the next booth, slurping a bowl of ngau laam fan, be sure to say hello.

Fo Gei, 200 Hollywood Road (entrance on Tai Ping Shan Road), Sheung Wan, Hong Kong, closes at 5pm.

Tsui Wah, G/F, 15-19 Wellington Street, Central, Hong Kong.

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