IT SMELLS SO TEMPTING!

In Hong Kong, in Aberdeen Harvour on the south side of the island, is a large and well-known floating restaurant. In Amsterdam, on the other side of the world, is a restaurant precisely like that. I was amused when I went back years ago and saw it, because typhoon shelters and Tanka fishing craft are not exactly common anywhere in Europe.

I never ate there. One does not go back to the Netherlands to eat Chinese food, although one will happily enjoy dim sum in the inner city, because it's better and less pretentious than fake French fare. And one needs a break from unidentifiable fried objects.

Aberdeen Harbour is near Ap Lei Chau, where an old friend has an office. The entire area has changed, there are now skyscrapers all over Hong Kong, and all the malls are air-conditioned and have food courts. Even the sellers of lapsap noodles have moved indoors. That's become a trend all over the industrialized world, because merchants want you to stay nearby, spend time, make sudden unreasonable purchases prompted by boredom and temporary insanity.
Of course the available snacky-nibbly stuff is more interesting where there are a large number of Cantonese than in, for instance, the Westfield Center on Market Street, or Hoog Catharijne in Utrecht. Where the best food I remember was a smoked eel sandwich.


In Hong Kong, the only thing probably still outdoors is the seller of fried stinky tofu.


All the cigarette smokers seem to know where he is. Because they've outlawed smoking inside public places there.


I should know what stinky tofu tastes like, what with being fiercely "food curious". But I could never screw up the appetite for it. It's one of those things like Limburger cheese.
The far less you know about it, probably very much the better.
Cheesy, with an interesting surface texture.
Yeah, um. Okay.



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