You may heard about Hong Kong is one of the most expensive city in the world, from food to house price, everything will cost you a lot. Then locals must be spent a lot on daily live? Maybe… but we actually have many other options on food, and cart noodle is one of the famous.
Cart noodle usually only visited by locals, so I suggest you read this before your visit.
History
Cart noodle was serve with a cart roaming on the streets, but after the arrangement by the government, now most of them are serve inside the restaurant. But they still keep the name of cart noodle so you know how they serve the noodle there.
Cart noodle is actually a combination of your choice, which including toppings, soup and noodle. You can mix and match for your own bowl.
Most of the toppings here are cheap and pre cooked food. They are not limited for meat, vegetables, but also with fishball, sausages, dim sum and internal organs.
Internal organs may not common in western, but it’s nothing special in asia. They are including curdled pig’s blood, pig intestine, omasum or pig skin.
And as cart noodle usually for cheap eat, so it’s not prepared for traveller, and that’s why English menu usually not available.
Restaurant design
As it’s for budget, most of the cart noodle restaurants are packed, and you usually need to share the table with others. To increase the profit, staffs will always clean up your empty dishes to make sure you will leave ASAP rather than sitting and relaxing there.
Ordering
As cart noodle always come with ton of choices on toppings, with average of 30 options on toppings, you will have to mark the order on your own. Usually cart noodle will provide an ordering paper with full list of their toppings, and you will have to circle what you want and give it to waiter. To reduce the manpower, you will have to pay in the cashier with the ordering paper, and they generally accept cash only.
If you interested to try the cart noodle in your next visit to Hong Kong, you can follow the list below for my cart noodle recommendation!
https://goo.gl/maps/bwUe2GmKYiCyiF8GA
Hope you can enjoy the traditional food in Hong Kong, and if you are interested about food in Hong Kong, you may also interested in our Hong Kong style cafe - Cha Chaan Teng