Hong Kong at Home

Housemates can be the pits sometimes. They drink your wine without replacing it, eat your food without asking, store their shoes in your bathroom (it happens) and keep you awake with loud music while you’re trying to sleep. If you’re really unlucky, you might even find they’ve died on your couch while eating a kebab.

But housemates can also become your best friends, your partners in crime, the people you go to for advice, they make you laugh and drink wine with you out on the deck. My boyfriend has such housemates – they’re moving back to Hong Kong on the weekend and to say goodbye they cooked us dinner. It was simple and quick but delicious and fresh – steamed crab with slices of ginger and spring onion and boiled tiger prawns with a chilli, oil and soy dipping sauce. So good.

We sat around and talked about Hong Kong and the food they eat for breakfast (egg, sausages and noodles) and they told us about a local singer who has made a reality TV show in Tasmania – apparently Tasmania is high on the list of places to visit for people in Hong Kong. We also talked food - our love of sashimi, street food, yum cha and how in Taiwan the name for fried rice means making love, which I thought was cute. After a couple of bottles of champagne, and a piece of crab I think I wasn’t really supposed to eat, we said our goodbyes but promised we’d experience the food of Hong Kong for ourselves one day soon.