Food shopping in Hong Kong's markets

Food shopping is fantastic in Hong Kong. I just returned from a two-week vacation and because I was staying with a friend who lived there, I didn't have to rely on restaurants for sustenance. On plenty of occasions, we cooked at home and thus I could avail myself of the food shopping in her neighborhood of Kennedy Town, a short bus ride west of Hong Kong's Central District.

Very close to where I was staying was a two-level indoor market. The first floor was devoted to vendors of meat and fish, the upper floor to produce sellers. I became very fond of the chicken guy, who wielded his big cleaver with a surgeon's precision. Some of the chickens had amazing amounts of subcutaneous fat - we're talking duck-level quantity - but when I needed a bird for broth, the chicken guy selected a very lean specimen for me, then removed the skin in one piece, as if it were a poultry overcoat.

The vegetables at the market were uniformly dazzling, both in their quality and variety. Even more amazing were the vegetables not at the market. In the middle of Hong Kong's business district were little shops selling fresh vegetables. Kneeling on the sidewalk a few blocks from my friend's apartment was an old woman selling fresh vegetables.

Much of the seafood in Hong Kong is sold live, often still swimming in tanks or struggling to heave itself off its bed of ice. You rarely see fillets or steaks; the Chinese much prefer to deal with a whole fish. There were species of crabs, clams and shrimp I'd never seen before, but the most unusual seafood I saw was dried. In the Western District is a stretch of Des Voeux Road, a main thoroughfare devoted almost exclusively to dried sea creatures - scallops, squid, fish bladders, sea cucumbers and, most notoriously, shark fins. Many of these items are used in small quantities to flavor a dish, the way you might infuse a pasta sauce with a bit of pancetta.

The prepared-food shopping scene also is pretty great. In residential areas, you could hardly swing a chicken without hitting a shop selling roast meat. Traditional Chinese kitchens have stovetops but no ovens; it's not possible to roast at home. But who would want to if you could buy such delectable roast chickens, ducks, geese and pork? Not I.