Founded in 1938 by a Mr. Lam from Chaozhou, Kee Heung Chun is now run by the third generation from Kennedy Town. It stocks 100+ loose-leaf teas, including aged pu-erh and Phoenix oolong, and supplies Hong Kong's five-star hotels.
Best for 100-plus teas including aged pu-erh and Phoenix oolong
Kee Heung Chun has run as a Chaozhou-style tea house since 1938, founded by a Mr. Lam from Chaozhou and now in its third generation of family management from a small shopfront at 30A Belcher's Street in Kennedy Town. The retail side carries more than 100 varieties of loose-leaf tea, including aged pu-erh, Wuyi and Phoenix oolong, jasmine green tea and rarer vintage lots, with tastings offered before purchase and portions sold as small as 50 grams for anyone wanting to sample rather than commit to a full tin. Wholesale is a substantial part of the business alongside the counter trade: the shop supplies five-star hotels, fine-dining restaurants, private clubs and catering operations across Hong Kong, putting its tea on menus well beyond Kennedy Town. Gift sets and festive hampers round out the retail side for customers buying to give rather than to drink themselves. What stands out most in visitor accounts is the owner's own role at the counter - generous with tasting pours and with explaining what separates one grade or vintage from another, running the shop as an education in Chaozhou gongfu tea culture as much as a retail transaction. For a business now well into its ninth decade, that direct, unhurried counter experience has stayed intact even as the wholesale side has grown around it.
Cleverly Street, Sheung Wan (Dried Seafood Street area)
On Kee grew from a small Sheung Wan seafood stall opened in the early 1970s into one of Hong Kong's largest dried seafood retailers, stocking more than 700 items including some 150 grades of dried abalone. Its canned and boxed abalone lines hold a leading market share in the city, sold alongside dried scallops, fish maw and ginseng.
Best for Wide selection of dried abalone and tonic ingredients
The Central bakery credited with inventing the cookie-crust egg tart.
Best for The Hong Kong bakery credited with inventing the cookie-crust egg tart
Tai Cheong Bakery opened on Lyndhurst Terrace in Hong Kong's Central district in 1954, founded by the uncle of the man who would make the shop famous: egg-tart maker Au Yeung, who inherited the business and, drawing on techniques from earlier work in hotel bakeries, developed the shop's own cookie-style shortcrust for its egg tarts rather than the flakier puff-pastry crust more common elsewhere in the city.
The tart's reputation crossed from neighborhood favorite to citywide institution largely through one regular customer: Chris Patten, Hong Kong's last British colonial governor, became known for frequenting the original Lyndhurst outlet, and his public praise for the tarts helped cement Tai Cheong's status as one of the city's most historic bakeries. The shop still bakes its tarts to that original cookie-crust recipe.
The business has since licensed its name and recipes abroad — a Singapore operation launched with pop-up counters at Takashimaya in March and May 2016 before opening a permanent counter that July, then a full cha chaan teng-style outlet in Holland Village that November — carrying the Hong Kong bakery's founding craft, the cookie-crust egg tart, onto menus built around Hong Kong-style café classics more broadly. The Singapore operation, run through a partnership with Food People Pte Ltd and the original Hong Kong shop, describes its own approach as dishes "inspired by old Hong Kong classics" and reworked with a modern twist, while the tart recipe itself is presented as the one constant carried over unchanged from Lyndhurst Terrace.
Cantonese lap mei — wind-dried sausage, liver sausage, cured pork belly and cured duck — used to be made by roughly twenty workshop-backed shops across Hong Kong; rising costs pushed most of that production out of the city over the following decades, leaving only a handful of shops that still cure on their own premises.
Best for Hand-tied Cantonese lap cheong and yun cheong
Cantonese lap mei — wind-dried sausage, liver sausage, cured pork belly and cured duck — used to be made by roughly twenty workshop-backed shops across Hong Kong; rising costs pushed most of that production out of the city over the following decades, leaving only a handful of shops that still cure on their own premises. Yue Wo Hop Kee, on Des Voeux Road West in Sai Ying Pun, is one of the survivors.
The shop was founded in 1973 by Fong Yam-fan, a native of Dongguan who had learned cured-meat making there before bringing the trade to Hong Kong's Western district. His son Fong Pui-yuen and son-in-law Fu Chau-wing ran the business through its middle decades, and Fu's own son joined in 2020 to help carry the shop into a third generation, after leaving a job in banking. Production still runs on manual technique at every stage — casing, cutting, seasoning, filling and drying — which the shop's own description of the process attributes directly to touch: "precision depends entirely on tactile experience."
The storefront sells lap cheong and yun cheong (liver sausage) made at the family's own facility in Kwai Chung, using pork, duck and goose liver, and rose-dew wine in the traditional recipe. No pricing, hours or shipping information beyond the shop's social presence was verified in this pass; anyone wanting stock levels or delivery should confirm directly through the shop's own channels before ordering.
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