If you ever want to deep dive into the local life and culture of a place, trying its street snacks is the fastest way to do so – not only can we learn about local ingredients, we can also take a peek into how the locals prepare their everyday meals.
Here at Mrs. Fong Chinese Desserts at Jordan’s Temple Street, you can see devoted fans braving the seemingly never-ending queues just to satiate their cravings for these traditional cakes and puddings. This is also where you can meet the store owners Mrs Fong and her eldest son Eric, and discover the ingenuity, mastery and techniques of Hong Kong-style cake and pudding creation.
“Whether it’s red bean cake or red date cake, you should have more of them. Girls shouldn’t forget to nourish their bodies…” Mrs Fong often advises her customers. 18 years ago, Mrs Fong started her business in the same district on Jordan Road. She was raising the kids while making pastries and tea dumplings that her grandmother taught her as a child. Fast forward to the present day, her eldest son Eric has graduated university with a tourism management degree and his heart set on inheriting and passing down the knowledge of pastry-making, so he has committed to working at his mother’s store full-time.
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If the legacy to be passed on can also evoke a desire for others to buy, then you can call that wisdom. Eric has decided to implement his “taste diversification” strategy by attracting customers with over 10 cakes and puddings of different colours and flavours. Crowd favourites like black sesame rolls, white sugar cake, put chai ko and the recently-launched coconut matcha cake are cut into thick and uniform pieces. New flavours are introduced from time to time, as displayed in the colourful French cake cabinets. Despite a higher price point, the store is still packed with people every day, and they were one of the snack shops recommended by MICHELIN Guide Hong Kong Macau 2022.
Through this new model, Eric hopes to acknowledge the quiet but hard-working pastry chefs and grant them a sense of accomplishment. After all, they’re not just creators – they play an important role in this cultural legacy. At the same time, he wants to introduce his cherished childhood memories and culture to young people and tourists, so these high-quality handcrafted sweets can be more widely recognised and appreciated.
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These traditional snacks originated from Guangdong, and once shaped the style of Hong Kong street snacks in the middle of last century (40s to 60s). Made of brown sugar and red beans, put chai ko were once sold in wooden barrels by hawkers. Whenever a customer made a purchase, the sweet pudding would be picked out of the bowl with bamboo sticks. White sugar cakes made of white rice and sugar were placed piece by piece on an upside-down bamboo cover and covered with cellophane. Hawkers would walk around and advertise with loud street cries to attract customers. Back then, these cakes and puddings were just as popular as roasted chestnuts, ding ding candies and airplane olives.
In Mrs Fong’s eyes, these cakes and puddings are actually a reflection of the wisdom of Cantonese people who started making these cheap snacks using nutritious ingredients with great health benefits: goji berries are good for the eyes, mung beans are cooling and can naturally reduce body heat, while black-eyed peas can reduce water retention and dampness in the body. To take this a step further, Mrs Fong has introduced healthier, reduced sugar recipes. She imports carefully selected raw ingredients, such as brown sugar, sesame seeds and large Tianjin red beans, and emphasises on using real ingredients.
The mother-son duo is aware that blindly following traditional methods is not always the best way to go, so they are always up for innovating. Taking their coconut split pea pudding as an example, the traditional recipe calls for corn starch to help the pudding solidify; however, resting at room temperature for an extended amount of time would cause the pudding to weep and collapse, so they have done their share of experiments and settled on using water chestnut flour instead. For their red date cake, they added longan pulp for varied texture and improved appearance. Eric is always at the store to observe the needs of customers and take note of their feedback. Recently, they added a queue ticket machine at the door to better organise the customers waiting in line. “Customers who buy in-store are our repeat customers, so I would rather give up large orders to serve them.” Eric believes that this shop named after his mother must have the same affinity as enjoying sweets made by his mother at home.
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Being heavily impacted by the pandemic last year, Mrs Fong Chinese Desserts was closed for a while. Until recently, The Fongs finally reopened the store and even launched an eight-inch brown sugar pudding and water chestnut pudding for Chinese New Year. They look forward to seeing their supportive and loyal fans again, always making the effort to live up to the love and trust of their customers.
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Text and photos by 孔牧, translated by Iris Wong. Read original article here.
