On My Plate

Denise Irvine loves her lunch at a Chinese eatery with new faces at the helm.

Lunch today is at Canton Hong Kong, 32 Alexandra St, Hamilton. It’s my first visit here and although this modest Chinese restaurant has been around for a while it’s now under the new ownership of husband-and-wife team Jack Liu and Melinda Zhang.

Jack is a trained chef, he’s originally from Beijing, China, and has cooked in restaurants in Korea, Sydney, New Plymouth and Cambridge. The couple also owns Lucky Chinese takeaway in Cambridge, which is largely run by Melinda.

Jack has won gold medals in international culinary competitions in China and Korea. This is posted on a billboard outside Canton HK, along with a description of his food: “All dishes are cooked using traditional Chinese recipes, giving them their unique flavours. In order to enjoy the full experience, we ask that you do not request special orders as this might change the flavour.”

Jack and Melinda are flying a bit under the radar in Hamilton at present but they are among many food-loving immigrants who enhance the city’s restaurant scene, extend our choices with a taste of their home country. There’s a vast menu at Canton HK and I’m pleased to be sharing this lunch with Alan Chew and Jeffrey To, both of Chinese heritage, who take the hard work away and order for me.

Alan is originally from Malaysia, Jeffrey from Hong Kong, and they rate Canton HK for its authenticity and quality. While the menu is primarily Cantonese, with well-balanced flavours that don’t overwhelm the primary ingredients, there are others available from greater China. Jeffrey says Cantonese food is easy to like because the Cantonese are very particular about their cooking.

 We start with pickled egg and pork congee (rice porridge), not a dish I’d normally order because I understand little about it. But this is the beauty of being with more knowledgeable people.  The pickled eggs, sometimes called Century Eggs, are preserved in a curing mixture that turns the whites black. While this might look a bit challenging for some, Alan says it’s no different from the challenge of blue cheese.

The congee is a comforting bowl of thick soupy rice with deeply savoury fragments of pork and pickled eggs, and slivers of fresh ginger. Jeffrey says – as he goes back for seconds and thirds – that you can’t beat congee for breakfast on a cold morning.

He says this one is a typical Cantonese-style congee, with the rice largely disintegrated after long cooking. Congees from other regions may have different textures, some of them with the rice more grainy and intact.

We also share deep-fried orange chicken; the chicken is light and crisp, the sauce has a vibrant citrus quick. And Grandma’s slow-braised pork belly, plated with steamed buns. The pork is meltingly tender, the sauce deliciously sweet and sticky. It’s a dish  typically perfected and cooked by older Chinese women, so is named for a kind of universal grandma rather than a member of Jack and Melinda’s own family.

There is also a beautifully presented rendition of Peking duck, which has its ancient origins in Jack’s home city of Beijing. Jack prepares the golden ducks in-house and we wrap the slices of tender meat and crispy skin in pancakes, add sweet and salty hoisin sauce and julienned carrots, cucumber and spring onion to cut the richness. It is a perfect balance of flavours and textures.

Each of our dishes has been painstakingly prepared and presented, they’re well-priced, and somehow between talking and eating, dipping in and out, we clear most of the platters. And, of course, there are dozens of other dishes to choose from.

Thanks, Canton Hong Kong. It was a pleasure.