The eye-popping colors and explosive graphic design on the cover of Hong Kong Local: Cult Recipes from the Streets that Make the City immediately announce this is a cookbook that breaks the sound barrier.. ArChan Chan has taken this category into a new arena that she’s steeped in unrestrained exuberance.

Born and bred in Hong Kong, Chan knows her territory and cleverly takes it from the realm of “food paradise” to a 24-hour all-you-can-eat buffet. Dividing her book into Early, Mid, and Late, Chan guides her readers through the culinary delights of a day in Hong Kong, showing how they can bring the food of that city into their own kitchens.

The recipes in Hong Kong Local aren’t the haute cuisine extravaganzas that Hong Kong feeds its high-end residents and plutocratic travelers. These dishes are street food offerings that can still to be found in the city’s dai pai dong and show up in congee shops, yum cha restaurants, and cha chaan teng. They’re uncomplicated and almost minimal, but all require the freshest ingredients and “a high level of attention and care.”

Opening the book to Early, readers can begin their days with congee, Chinese doughnuts,and fresh soy milk. Heartier appetites are appeased with milk tea, beef noodles and sticky rice rolls while traditionalists are taken to the delights of dim sum: steamed pork ribs, dumplings, and sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves.

Still hungry? How about a pastry? Egg tarts, pineapple buns, coconut tarts, sponge cake? Hong Kong french toast--or soup?

Moving on to lunch in Mid, Chan once again pays attention to appetites of varying capacities, with choices that range from snacks (bao and pork) to noodles, pepper steak, and fried rice, with mango soup, custards, and smiley cookies for dessert, washed down with a red bean crushed ice drink. This section moves along briskly; Hong Kong lunches aren’t lingering affairs--time is money, there’s shopping to be done, business deals to close, and a number of people hovering nearby, waiting for empty tables.

Late slows way down with moveable feasts in the company of family and friends that can easily last for hours--and Chan’s recipes reflect that luxurious abundance. Steamed whole fish with soy and spring onion, cheesy lobster, typhoon shelter crab, oyster omelette, nine different poultry dishes that include the traditional salted baked chicken, fried morning glory with fermented bean curd--this is siu yeh, the fourth meal, and Hong Kongers make it count.

Chan charitably concludes with basic recipes and a glossary of ingredients along with where to find them, for everyone who’s not lucky enough to have a Hong Kong auntie at their disposal.

Hong Kong Local covers a lot of different bases. It’s a cookbook, a culinary guide to Hong Kong, and a godsend to people who live far from the Cantonese restaurants of America’s Chinatowns and hunger for the food they remember. And for those who know and love Hong Kong, it’s filled with neighborhood photographs that tease with their lack of captions and beckon with the welcome that this city is famous for. ArChan Chan’s recipes and Alana Dimou’s photographs provide the cheapest ticket to Hong Kong that’s ever been offered.

Chan, who left Hong Kong to perfect her culinary art in Australia, and who now is a noted chef in another food city, Singapore, is clearly homesick. Hong Kong Local is an invitation, a love letter, and a dazzling collection of burnished memories.~Janet Brown

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