A Hotel Breakfast

Lou and I usually make a point of not eating breakfast at our hotel when we travel. It's just one more meal with which we can experience how the locals eat. On our first morning in Hong Kong, we woke up hungry and grabbed the guidebook to get an idea of what part of town we'd want to go for a good breakfast. We read that very few restaurants are open in the morning and those that are sell soup noodles and congee, or rice porridge, for breakfast. Hotel breakfast buffet, here we come. Luckily, besides the western coices of freshly made omelettes and bacon, it included congee, or rice porridge, so we were able to give that a try. It was very bland and savory as opposed to our overly sweetened breakfast grains I'm accustomed to. It was not the taste I had expected. Also included in the buffet were some chinese dumplings. One was pork filled and the other was filled with minced shrimp. Both were excellent, and Lou found a new favorite. Chinese eat Dim Sum during the day for brunch, lunch, or an afternoon tea. They eat often, sometimes 5 times a day. We didn't fall into that habit, probably because it is so easy to over-order and then over-eat, but with Lou's new craving, we found ourselves eating dumplings with almost every meal.
I'll have to go to the Wok Shop in China town to buy some steamer baskets for making Dim Sum. Lou can't stop talking about these scrumptiously stuffed steamed pockets of dough.