茶餐厅 Chácāntīng — The Cha Chaan Teng

The cha chaan teng, and what a colonial kitchen produced

The 茶餐厅 is Hong Kong's most characteristic institution and the most efficient restaurant format in the world. It serves tea, coffee, toast, macaroni soup, rice plates, noodles and sandwiches, all day, at speed, cheaply. You sit where you are put, including at a table with strangers; the order is taken in about eight seconds and written on a slip; the food arrives in four minutes; and lingering is not the point, which makes it the exact opposite of the Chengdu teahouse in lesson 69 and of the crab dinner in lesson 62. The food is a genuine hybrid and its history is legible on the menu. Hong Kong under British rule had Western restaurants that most Chinese residents could not afford or did not feel welcome in, and from the 1950s the 冰室 and then the 茶餐厅 supplied a local version: tea with evaporated milk rather than fresh, toast with condensed milk, macaroni in broth for breakfast, egg tarts adapted from Portuguese pastries by way of Macau, and pork chops on rice. 丝袜奶茶 — silk-stocking milk tea — is strained repeatedly through a cloth bag until it is smooth, and it is now listed as intangible cultural heritage. None of this is fusion cooking in the modern sense; it is what happens when a port city cooks what it can get. The language is the same story. 多士, 士多啤梨, 三文治, 布丁, 芝士, 沙律, 波士 for boss, 冷气 for air conditioning — all English, all arriving through Cantonese phonology, and all now simply the words. The mainland took some of them back later, which is why 巴士 and 的士 and 芝士 turn up in Shanghai. What confuses a Mandarin learner is that the characters were chosen to fit Cantonese sounds, so 士多啤梨 read in Mandarin is shìduōbēilí and sounds nothing like strawberry, while in Cantonese it is close. Practical notes for a first visit. Sit where you are directed and expect to share. Order fast, because the person taking it is busy and will come back rather than wait. The 常餐 or 快餐 is the cheapest route and includes a drink. Say 冻 or 热. And pay at the till on the way out with the slip, not at the table. If you manage 唔该 and 冻鸳鸯走冰 you will get a look of mild surprise and possibly a better table, which is the whole reward of this lesson.