19 Feb NEWS: Cathay Pacific hosts Little Adventures in Hong Kong

Riddle: How long does it take to get from JFK airport to Hong Kong? That's the question our LAHK founder and director, Daisann McLane, asked the assembled group of 80 Cathay Pacific employees at her talk last week, entitled "From JFK to HKG, My Little Adventure in Hong Kong." The correct answer? Not 15 hours, or 14.5--but two minutes. Time enough to hear the familiar lilt of Cantonese, feel welcomed into the pristine, state of the art equipped cabin by the most efficient flight staff on earth. "The moment you enter the Cathay aircraft, no matter where in the world you board it, you're back home, in Hong Kong," Daisann said. ...

23 Jan What is Hong Kong’s Soy Sauce Western Cuisine?

Tonight the Little Adventures in Hong Kong team--Daisann, Janice, Johannes, Charmaine and Daniel-- had our pre-Chinese New Year staff dinner at one of Hong Kong's oldest and most venerable restaurants: Tai Ping Koon. It's got a Chinese name, but they don't serve Chinese food, not exactly. Tai Ping Koon is one of the originators of a made-in-Hong Kong culinary niche called "Soy Sauce Western" cuisine. It's kind of like the inverse of American Chinese food: this is "Western" type food that has been modified to the Hong Kong Chinese palate. (As opposed to the chop suey "Chinese" restaurants geared to American tastes that you find in Chinatowns in North America)...

04 Jan Little Adventures Star Team in Action!

Yesterday, Chef Albert Adria, younger brother of fabled El Bulli's fabled Ferran Adria, came to Hong Kong for ONE day only to cook a special, by invitation only dinner at HK's hot spot of the moment, Catalunya. (While HKers love our Cantonese food, we crave variety too, and tapas are all the rage now.) Guess who was on hand to greet and exclusively interview Chef Adria? That's right: Little Adventures' senior host Johannes Pong. ...

14 Dec Chinese Characters: The Bird Men of Sheung Wan

  When I first started studying Chinese characters--the kind you write with pen and paper, not the people kind--one of the first stories I read straight through was about an ancient Emperor who delighted in keeping songbirds in cages. Nowadays in Hong Kong we don't have any Emperors floating about, but we still have some very elegant gentlemen who practice the art of what I will call "Song Bird-ery". I started noticing them years ago on my walks around Sheung Wan, and now they are like old friends, since so many of our Little Adventures in Hong Kong routes take us through their domain. Here, in one of those blah, concrete-happy Hong Kong vest pocket parks, where you enter to a big sign that "welcomes" you with a list of no-nos) the Bird Gentlemen feed their finches, tell their tales....

16 Oct Little Adventures at the CNN Foodie Challenge

We had a fabulous time working with CNN on Anthony Bourdain's "Parts Unknown Foodie Challenge" last week. CNN has an awesome photo essay that captures all the action of the event here. We also grabbed some snapshots of our Little Adventures in Hong Kong team hard at work judging which two of the 12 teams had the best all around foodie knowledge....