YT: https://youtu.be/gmUIjnkm5bg
L: I think that’s the start of our podcast. I’m Louis. I’m introducing myself.
I: And I’m Isaac.
L: So today we chose to talk about the little (authentic) restaurants. the little like small non-chain market, some things that’s sort of equivalent to a 7-Eleven. but like just ran by some guy. Probably not the most academic of languages, I’ll admit.
L: We chose these sorts of things because they tend to go in new luxury developments.As the site we picked is expected to be replaced with new luxury developments that will not have these chains. They will have maybe a McDonald’s, they will have a Cafe de Caroll, they will have the sort of very standard chains. They’ll have a 7-Eleven or a Welcome or a Circle K.
I: And I think we can show them about different stores and like this store is some restaurant that might be vanishing within 10 years because of hygiene issues. There are some terrible hygiene issues like in this local authentic restaurant and you can…
L: That’s part of the parcel of what you expect at a place like that. You go there knowing what you’re getting.
I: Yeah. You can see rats and cockroaches somewhere else.
L: One thing I would say that will be a big factor in whether or not they’re able to continue existing is that if this building is not, when this building is not down, because this is part of a set that when this new much more modern piece is put in place, the rent price will be double triple what it currently is. And so it’s just these restaurants are not going to be able to afford it as well. And the luxury developments nearby include things like the Elements Shopping Center one of the most expensive shopping centers in Hong Kong. We had a look to try and find basically any small restaurants that weren’t in the area that was set to be destroyed. And we couldn’t really find one. We found a McDonald’s, we found a shopping center, a major shopping center and that was it. There is a tall building in Hong Kong and an MTR station and some chains.
I: And I think Louis has raised another reason. That’s why the local authentic restaurant is vanishing because no one is willing to open a local restaurant rather than having a fancy cafe and have a higher profit because you can attract more people to come by the decoration of it. And I think that you also mentioned about the rent increase because when redevelopment appeared the rent would increase tremendously and the old local restaurant can’t afford it as well. And I want to also mention a point because the redevelopment of public housing estate ( Let me give) some background information is that many authentic local restaurants are aimed to serve the local residents here to provide some cheap food for residents.
L: Who will be affected by this? And the answer is mostly lower income people. People that will be harmed by harm to everyone, already some of the more vulnerable people. These are people that can only really afford to eat at these sorts of restaurants. that can only afford their $30 rice and meat. Yeah. And suddenly they’re going to be paying $70 for the same place where they can’t even afford to live anymore because their house is also gone.
I: Yeah. Yes. And I want to mention more about, so basically nowadays there are many so-called two-dish rice. I’m not sure that Louis has heard it before, but it’s not like a local restaurant but it’s also like a fast food chain restaurant providing some cheap food. And it’s also replacing some local authentic restaurants as well because it’s cheap and it’s a food chain. You can provide low cost meal for the low income workers.
L: Yeah. I’m vaguely aware of two-dish rice. I’m not quite often going to one myself yet, but it’s certainly an interesting- be interesting restaurant.
I: I think it is a shame to also see these restaurants
L: One of the other things we noticed, if we want to keep moving through the photos while we’re here as well, to show more of these restaurants is that it was a really international set of restaurants. It’s restaurants that I have almost never seen food from that country in Hong Kong outside of visiting this area. And those are the restaurants that aren’t going to have an equivalent chain.So it’s a cuisine that will just stop being available. If I can’t go and buy a sort of an Indian style curry anymore, that’s quite a big difference because there isn’t really a chain I can get an Indian curry at. I can still get barbecue pork at a Cafe de Coral. It will be worse at a Cafe de Coral, but I can still get it. I can’t get- I can’t really get pho really if I don’t have a smaller local store. I haven’t really found a proper chain that does pho.I haven’t found chains that do a lot of these sort of little international dishes. And it will be a real shame for Hong Kong, a place that has historically been seen as a meeting point of countries and by proxy a meeting point of cuisines, lose that international aspect that made it so attractive as a person that has come to Hong Kong.
I: yeah, i’d like to share one more screen, and here, can you see this screen? And when you’re focusing on the price like here you can see that it’s very very cheap and i think like after the redevelopment of the like neighbourhood and the rent will increase and in fact that’s inevitable. And here it says breakfast is only 34 dollars and it’s very very cheap and im afraid that plenty of the local authentic restaurants cannot afford the high rent as well because like meanwhile they are providing 34 dollar breakfast.
L: yeah, i’m going to be honest, the places that will come along to replace it will cost literally triple that. They will be 120 dollars.
I: yes, definitely and there are more and more cheap cafe and cha chaan teng that are local, authentic I think that after the redevelopment it will just all vanish
L: do we want to show off some more of these building. I think of of the other questions that was posed was, what’s being done about the impending disappearance? Quite frankly nothing as far as i can tell. As far as i am aware, these restaurants and these areas are just going to disappear into the ever marching machine of luxury housing. Something that always continues to just break things and replace existing housing.
I: In my point of view I think that it will not disappear but the price of the products will increase many times. Like you can’t ever see the 34 dollar breakfast again after the development. Because gentrification, when one place is redeveloped rent and prices of products increase tremendously and the old rather low income people can’t afford it either so the restaurant loses their profit and they cannot afford themselves also.
L: I will say one thing that always does tend to happen with gentrification is that it is not the same stores. To use my home country as an example, you often see cheap areas go from what would often be described as post night out food, your fried chicken, your kebabs, things like that, these areas will have these and they will slowly start to be replaced with things like upmarket cafes, coffee houses. (I said coffee houses with a weird amount of disdain there). You see a lot of these places start as a small local restaurant and the food that is offered after gentrification changes as the people that it is aimed at changes. As this is a much more low income area it is likely to have a quite international population looking at how hong kong’s demographics tend to be and after it is redeveloped it is going to be mostly a combination of locals and maybe some Europeans and americans. And that it going to mean that the food that is on offer there is just going to change. Hopefully this food is going to find new places to be and it also just might not and that’s a shame because all these interesting cuisines deserve to be represented, i think we have a lot of quite interesting restaurants in our list of places. We have korean restaurants, there were Sichuan, a lot of chinese restaurants to be fair. There are restaurants from all over the world. There was seafood restaurants, we found a lot of restaurants in this area. I also just think the number of restaurants will decrease just looking at how the areas around them are built and looking at other modern developments in hong kong, they just haven’t built as much restaurant space. I think that is genuinely a shame.
I: I would like to mention one more because i would like to share one more screen because it’s really old, you can see someone is enjoying his lunch or dinner outside the restaurant and these are local cultural representations in hong kong. Like when you think of hong kong you can think of sitting with a cup of milk tea or a cup of lemon tea just chit chatting with others nearby. I think this is one of the most famous hong kong local characteristics and i think when these restaurants are gone and vanished i think these cultural representations and cultural characteristics of hong kong will disappear also and I think that’s a shame also.
L: I think that’s probably everything we have to say.