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Hong Kong’s most celebrated restaurants are the kind of Michelin-rated palaces to gastronomy that you can find in cities across the world. They congregate at the top of sky-scrapers, boasting views across the bay, with its gaudy nightly light display.
Most of them are fine, some are even excellent, but the places that make the biggest impression aren’t these aerial cathedrals to dim sum but the strange, spartan boxes that grow like mushrooms into the very architecture of the city.
One such place is Tsim Chai Kee, a noodle bar with all the design flourishes of a young offenders institution. In the basement, an elderly woman prepares a mountain of wantons, creating the fist-size balls with a single hand and popping them on a table that sags under the weight. On a busy day they can shift thousands of them, which is no surprise; this is the food of gods, the giant prawns giving each mouthful a satisfying crunch, the broth rich with umami. Each bowl costs less than