So before we went on our trip, I did A LOT of homework. And a lot of my research was taken from OpenRice.com. It's a website that manages restaurant reviews generated by users, and there's tons of it. You can filter by neighborhood, cuisine, price range, ratings... It's a site that I can trust, and often can get a sense of what people are talking about by looking at the submitted pictures. You might be also wondering why it's called "open rice". In cantonese, the characters 開飯 are pronounced hoi fan, means "let's eat". You use it like a verb, "What time to hoi fan?" meaning "what time is dinner starting?". Now, if you take each of the character and translate them directly, you'll get hoi as in open (or start something), and fan as in rice. Things often get mistranslated there though, people can make mistakes in translating each characters separately verus translating the phrase or word. In this case with Open Rice, they decided to keep the weird brand name that makes absolutely no sense to westerners so they could keep a common phrase short and sweet. The Cantonese language is all about short and direct (and filled with slangs) so why not keep things interesting and odd and go with OpenRice?
So back to Kung Wo Soy Products 公和荳品廠. When I first saw them on OpenRice, the local authenticity drawn my attention. With real estate spiking everyone's rent, it's becoming harder and harder to find small businesses in Hong Kong. A mom-and-pop shop like Kung Wo was instantly added to my "grab-a-bite" list. Located on Pei Ho Street (北河街) in Sham Shui Po (深水埗), Kung Wo does it all producing all kinds of soy goodness. With the outdoor markets going on, I was afraid not being able to find this place. But look! Good thing I can read Chinese and spotted their sign from a block away. (located right after Alibaba Halal Food and A. Kashmir Curry House.)
On the left side of the shop, you got your fresh tofu, tofu puffs, bean sprout, and fresh soy milk. On the right side, you got a lady who's been mastering the fried tofu for probably too many years to count.
Fresh tofu like this is becoming harder to find because the process is too time-consuming. And I feel that it's easier for the younger generation, like myself, to grab pre-packaged tofu from the supermarket. I wish New York has a tofu place like this!
We didn't get to try the fried tofu this time 'cause we really weren't hungry. But we did get a cup of fresh soy milk and a bowl of cold sweet tofu pudding sprinkled with brown sugar!
Later on we went to the Lady's Market and Langham Place in MongKok (which we enjoyed visiting last time). Before leaving the mall, we decided to grab some light snacks at the food court – Taiwanese fried chicken and mixed veggies!
