Hong Kong cha chaan tengs dropped French toast in the deep fryer, and that's how sai do si was born
Hong Kong's food fusion wasn't designed — it was forced into being by colonialism, migration and efficiency: French toast was proletarianised into sai do si, Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan rice noodles carry the soul of cart noodles, and even bad service became a signature.
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Sai do si is French toast made plebeian
Sai do si comes from French toast, but French toast has to be fried slowly and needs good bread, which ordinary people had no access to. Hong Kong cha chaan tengs made it plebeian: the bread became the cheapest white square loaf, and because the priority is speed of service it goes straight into the deep fryer, finished with condensed milk and sugar — and later, when the flavour wasn't deemed rich enough, peanut butter was sandwiched between the two slices. Wu Se Quan Wei sums this up as the core logic of cha chaan teng culture: make every Western dish plebeian, and produce it in the fastest, quickest, cheapest way.
— Wu Se Quan WeiBaked pork chop rice was standardised by Café de Coral
Baked pork chop rice was first launched in cha chaan tengs, not as a dish of grand restaurants. Its cooking method is itself East-West: Chinese-style egg fried rice as the base, topped with cheese, pork chop and tomato sauce, then baked in an oven. In the sixties and seventies Chinese cooking rarely used ovens, and the very concept of ‘baking’ was unfamiliar to mainlanders — when it first arrived people didn't understand it, so the name was changed to roast pork chop rice. Later Café de Coral launched its baked pork chop rice line in the sixties and standardised it through chain operations; today Fairwood and ordinary cha chaan tengs all do it much the same way.
— Wu Se Quan WeiSilk-stocking milk tea may be gender marketing
Silk-stocking milk tea is made by repeatedly pouring tea through a silk-cotton mesh bag, and the bulk of the tea powder is Ceylon black tea — which the British created by moving Wuyi Mountain tea to Darjeeling and growing it in India, to counter their tea trade deficit. Wu Se Quan Wei offers an evidence-free private suspicion: that silk-stocking milk tea is a highly successful piece of marketing. Milk tea and yuen yeung were mainly supplied to working-class male labourers for energy, and naming it after a women's item — silk stockings — was a gimmick in a society then dominated by male culture. He draws an analogy with the later boba milk tea, also a description of the female body from a male standpoint.
— Wu Se Quan WeiBad service became Australia Dairy Company's signature
The ‘fast’ of a cha chaan teng isn't only fast service; it also shows in a service attitude that strafes everyone indiscriminately. Australia Dairy Company in Jordan serves very simple food, and the waiters are extremely impatient — over time this became a feature, and plenty of people may come precisely to be scolded by it, though the quality of the food is genuinely good, and now it's a signature. Wu Se Quan Wei's advice: Hongkongers' formal lunch service is at one o'clock and dinner at seven or eight, so if you go to a cha chaan teng an hour to an hour and a half early, it's less crowded and the service attitude is much better.
— Wu Se Quan WeiHong Kong-style rice noodles carry the soul of cart noodles
Hong Kong-style rice noodles began as a Sichuan-Yunnan hybrid — Sichuan flavours plus Yunnan flavours — and later Guizhou was added, making it Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan rice noodles. The first shop, opened in Cheung Sha Wan, was called Tam Jai Yunnan Mixian; later the founders fell out and it split into Tam Jai and Tam Jai Sam Gor. It took off because service is fast: the sour-spicy and numbing-spicy broths are all standardised — by today's standards, all pre-made — and no head chef is needed. The other reason is the Hong Kong tradition of eating cart noodles — in Cantonese called ‘laap zaap ming’ — a bowl of noodles with white radish, pork intestine and pig's blood, to which you can add other meats: fast, filling, and loaded with toppings. The cart-noodle business model was transplanted onto rice noodles, so Hong Kong-style rice noodles bear a deep brand of the cart-noodle soul.
— Wu Se Quan WeiChilli heat was brought into Hong Kong by the railway
When Wu Se Quan Wei first went to Hong Kong in 2010 there was little spicy food locally; craving chilli, he had to cross the border to Shenzhen via Luohu to eat it, because Shenzhen had more Sichuan restaurants. After a year or two there, spicy food suddenly became popular. He judges this to be tied to improved transport: early Hong Kong migrants were mostly from Shanghai or Guangdong, with few from the southwest, and Hong Kong originally had little spicy cooking — more Shanghai benbang cuisine with its heavy oil and dark sauce, or Fujian's sweeter flavours. Later many Hunanese arrived, and with high-speed rail, getting to Kowloon Station is now very convenient. The first spicy thing he ate in Hong Kong was Shangxin sour and spicy noodles, so named because they made Hongkongers cry.
— Wu Se Quan WeiAny chicken dish gets better in Hong Kong
Wu Se Quan Wei says Hong Kong's greatest skill is upgrading every chicken dish made anywhere else, because Hongkongers are extremely demanding about chicken: they insist on ‘the chicken tasting of chicken’, the skin must be springy and crisp yet still carry a little blood near the bone, and the chicken is prepared Cantonese white-cut style with ginger scallion. So any dish with chicken, once it comes to Hong Kong, tastes better than where it originated — including Singapore's Hainanese chicken rice, which in Hong Kong is more tender than in Singapore, because the chicken is better than Singapore's. Hainanese chicken rice isn't actually a Hainanese dish; it was adapted by the Singapore-Malay side, and in Hong Kong it was adapted again, becoming Cantonese chicken with Nanyang flavours.
— Wu Se Quan WeiOld-school restaurants were eliminated by the tide of the times
When Wu Se Quan Wei first went to Hong Kong to study, he liked the old restaurants around Yau Ma Tei: there were basically no young people, only the elderly, some holding birdcages, and dim sum was sold from pushcarts — no order forms, the cart pusher would shout ‘anyone want siu mai’, you'd take a basket, and if it ran out before reaching you, you didn't get any; you had to grab. A cha chaan teng he liked was called China Café — a very Chinese name, a location for popular films, with especially good milk tea, a building of mosaic tiles pieced together, and seating that carried a very old atmosphere; it closed during the pandemic. He holds that the worst thing about Hong Kong society is the property hegemony: rents are too high, most landlords don't operate anything and just collect rent, the people actually doing business have it very hard, and a large batch of old shops that had run for decades went under during the pandemic.
— Wu Se Quan WeiIn their own words · checked verbatim
But I think Hong Kong's so-called cha chaan teng culture is precisely that it made all this Western food plebeian.
但我觉得香港的所谓的茶餐厅文化 就是将所有这种西方料理 全部平民化了
Wu Se Quan Wei5:48
It used a Chinese-style egg fried rice as the base — the pork chop rice has to use egg fried rice as the base — and actually it's also a calorie bomb.
它用了一个中式的蛋炒饭 做底 然后猪扒饭是要用蛋炒饭来做底 然后其实它也是一个热量炸弹
Wu Se Quan Wei7:46
There's no evidence for this, but I privately suspect it's a very successful piece of marketing.
这个没有什么证据 但我私人怀疑这是一种非常成功的一个营销
Wu Se Quan Wei12:08
The cha chaan teng's adaptation is a strafing of everyone, an indiscriminate strafing — not aimed specifically at tourists.
茶餐厅的适应是对所有人扫射 无差别扫射 不是专门指对游客
Wu Se Quan Wei18:12
It now has nothing at all to do with Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan rice noodles; it's really just a Hong Kong-style rice noodle, a Hong Kong rice noodle bearing the deep brand of the cart-noodle soul.
它现在已经跟云归穿米线一点关系都没有了 其实就是一个港式米线 带着深深的车崽面灵魂烙印的一个 一个香港的米线
Wu Se Quan Wei24:14
I think Hong Kong's greatest skill is upgrading every chicken dish made anywhere else.
我觉得香港最厉害的 是把所有其他地方做的鸡肉都升级
Wu Se Quan Wei39:23
I think a lot of things aren't purely a spectacle, about hygiene or whatever — it's a kind of cultural memory.
我觉得很多东西不是说它只是单纯的景观 要卫生什么 它是一种文化记忆
Wu Se Quan Wei1:02:40
The city's progress, its development, is hard to resist and must be faced, but some cultural things should be appropriately preserved.
城市的进步是发展是难以抗拒的 也必须要去面对的 但有一些文化上的东西要适当的保留
Wu Se Quan Wei1:06:41
Figures
| Year Wu Se Quan Wei moved to Hong Kong | 2010 | 2:00 |
| Location of the first Tam Jai Yunnan Mixian shop | Cheung Sha Wan | 21:21 |
| Monthly salary range of foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong | 10,000-plus to 20,000-plus Hong Kong dollars | 30:19 |
| Monthly salary of a dishwasher in Hong Kong | 10,000-plus Hong Kong dollars | 30:19 |
| Per-person cost of a Sai Kung seafood set meal | two to three hundred Hong Kong dollars | 48:29 |
| Amount a martial arts choreographer spent picking up the bill for Sai Kung seafood | thirty to forty thousand Hong Kong dollars | 48:29 |
| Per-person spend on hot pot in Hong Kong | over a thousand Hong Kong dollars | 50:32 |
| Year Hong Kong's marriage civil law followed the Great Qing Legal Code and abolished concubinage | the seventies | 52:35 |
Glossary
- Sai do si
- The deep-fried French toast of Hong Kong cha chaan tengs, often served with condensed milk or sugar and called a calorie bomb.
- Cart noodles
- A traditional Hong Kong noodle dish, called laap zaap ming in Cantonese, where a bowl of noodles can be topped with white radish, pork intestine, pig's blood and many other toppings.
- Cooked food market
- A uniformly managed Hong Kong building-style market selling vegetables and seafood, which also houses dai pai dong stalls doing evening stir-fries.
- Tong fong
- Hong Kong slang for a subdivided rented cubicle, roughly ten square metres.
How to listen
Listeners interested in Hong Kong food culture, urban migration history and restaurant business models — especially people in the restaurant trade or following urban cultural preservation.
From 34:22 to 35:22 the transcript is garbled and repetitive; skippable.