The dish
Egg and beef sandwich, Hong Kong
Plate up
In the great push and pull of cultures, in the inevitable exchange when one empire seeks to colonise another, you might think Great Britain wouldn’t have a lot to offer the Chinese when it comes to food. And yet, dine in Hong Kong today, and you’ll find remnants of British culture on the plates in front of you, particularly if you’re eating the nostalgia-filled dishes of Hong Kong’s past. Case in point: the egg and beef sandwich. Before we get to its history, and its association with British colonists, let’s dig into the dish itself. An egg and beef sandwich does what it says on the box, two slices of old-school white bread with a filling of fluffy scrambled eggs – often made fluffy with the addition of milk or cream, and corn starch – plus corned beef, sometimes sliced, sometimes diced. And that’s it. For many Hong Kong residents this is comfort food at its finest.
First serve
Much like the Vietnamese banh mi, that famous sandwich served in a French-style baguette, you don’t have to work too hard to see the link with egg and beef sandwiches to its colonisers. British settlers in the 20th century had a habit of using canned, corned beef in their sandwiches, preferring it to local, unprocessed meat. The cooks at Hong Kong’s “cha chaan tengs”, its modest, fast-food diners, then modified the idea to suit local tastes, adding the scrambled eggs. There are now plenty of variations on this recipe, sometimes using Spam instead of tinned beef, or mixing the egg with Hong Kong-style satay beef.
Order there
In Hong Kong, Sun Hang Yuen is a classic cha chaan teng in Sham Shui Po, open since 1968, and it does a famous egg and beef sandwich (no website).
Order here
For HK-style egg sandwiches in Sydney, head to The Peak Hong Kong Cafe in Glebe (instagram.com/thepeakhkcafe). For cha chaan teng food in Melbourne, visit HK Cafe in Russell Street (hkcafe.com.au). In Adelaide, order a Hong Kong-style sandwich at Brolly Toasties (brollytoasties.com.au).
One more thing
The egg sandwich isn’t the only hint of the British empire on a cha chaan teng menu: check out Hong Kong-style milk tea, French toast, and even macaroni and beef.
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Ben Groundwater is a Sydney-based travel writer, columnist, broadcaster, author and occasional tour guide with more than 25 years’ experience in media, and a lifetime of experience traversing the globe. He specialises in food and wine – writing about it, as well as consuming it – and at any given moment in time Ben is probably thinking about either ramen in Tokyo, pintxos in San Sebastian, or carbonara in Rome. Follow him on Instagram @bengroundwaterConnect via email.
