Cha chaan teng
Encyclopedia : C : CH : CHA : Cha chaan teng
| Cha chaan teng | |
|---|---|
| |
| Traditional Chinese | 茶餐廳 |
| Simplified Chinese | 茶餐厅 |
| Cantonese Jyutping | caa4 caan1 teng1 |
| Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin | Chá cān tīng |
The Cha chaan teng (Traditional Chinese: }, literally "tea restaurant") is a type of Chinese tea restaurant commonly found in Hong Kong, known for its eclectic menus which include many Hong Kong cuisine and localised Hong Kong-style Western cuisine.
Name
The Cha chan teng provides tea (usually weak tea) contained in brown plastic cups, called "clear tea" (清茶 Cantonese Jyutping: cing1 caa4), to customers as soon as they are seated, although many patrons use the tea to wash their cutlery instead of drinking it. Thus the name "tea restaurant" serves to distinguish itself from the western restaurant that provides water to customers instead of tea. The "tea" in the name of tea restaurant, however, refers to the inexpensive black tea, not the traditional Chinese tea as served in traditional Chinese restaurants and teahouses (茶樓; Yale: chàh làuh, Jyutping: caa4 lau4). Moreover, some cha chaan tengs prefer the use of the word "café" in their names.The "tea" may also refer to those tea drinks, such as the Hong Kong-styled milk tea and lemon tea, which are very popular in cha chaan tengs. Also note that the older generations in Hong Kong use yum sai cha (飲西茶, lit. drinking Western tea) to mean eating at a western restaurant, in contrast with Chinese-style yum cha.
Menus
The cha chaan teng serves a wide range of food, from steak to wonton noodles to curry to sandwiches. Both fast food and a la carte dishes are provided in cha chaan tengs.
A big cha chaan teng often consists of three cooking places: a "water bar" (水吧) which makes drinks, toast/sandwiches and instant noodles, a "noodle stall" which prepares Chiuchow-style noodles (including wonton noodles), and a kitchen for producing rice plates and other more expensive dishes. A few famous cha chaan tengs only have a water bar and a cake display.
The invention of drinks like yuanyang (鴛鴦) and Iced coffee with Lemon (凍檸啡) is often credited to the cha chaan teng.
A typical menu includes:
- Noodles
- * Wonton noodles
- * Instant noodles with canned or preserved foodstuff, e.g. ham, pork luncheon meat, and preserved vegetables.
- * Vermicelli
- * Udon
- Pasta
- * Macaroni
- * Spaghetti
- Rice plates (usually referred as 碟頭飯 (Cantonese Jyutping: dip6 tau2 faan6), as the varieties offered by different cha chaan teng are more or less the same.)
- *豆腐火腩飯 - Rice with fried tofu and BBQ pork tenderloin (豬腩)
- * 雜扒飯 - Rice with assorted meats (usually ham, sausage, tenderloin-like beef).
- *火腿雞扒飯 - Rice with ham and chicken fillet, usually served with tomato sauce. (See note 1)
- *粟米石班飯 - Rice with creamed corn and deep-fried filet of garoupa.
- Bread and cake
- * "Freshly baked" (either provided by a supplier or baked on the premises)
- ** 蛋撻 Egg tart, a tasty baked egg custard.
- ** 菠蘿包 Pineapple bun (See note 2) or 菠蘿油 (bor law yau), a steaming hot sweet bun stuffed with a slice of butter.
- ** 忌簾椰絲包 Bread with cream filling, topped with shredded coconut
- ** 西多士 French toast - The local version is typically stuffed with peanut butter and deep-fried until golden.
- ** 油占多 - Butter and jam on toast
- ** Sandwiches
- *** With preserved foodstuffs
- *** With fresh meat and vegetables e.g. Sandwich with tomato slices and beef
- Drinks (See notes 3-6)
- * Tea with milk (milk tea 奶茶) or lemon (lemon tea 檸檬茶)
- * Coffee (咖啡)
- ** Straight (black coffee) (齋啡) (also known as 飛沙走奶 lit. fly sand run milk, 飛沙 means sugar-free, 走奶 means milk-free)
- ** With milk
- ** With tea and milk (鴛鴦)
- ** With lemon slices (檸啡)
- * "Chinese-style Lemonade" (檸水) (not really lemonade, but water mixed with sweet syrup and served with lemon slices)
- * With lemon (e.g lemon coke 檸樂, lemon 7-up 檸七, lemon Ribena 檸賓)
Note 2: "Pineapple bun" does not contain pineapple or any of its derivatives. It acquires the name from the caramelised crispy topping, an outcome of baked syrup mingled with eggs. It is often served with a slice of butter. A "pineapple bun" served in this way is called buttered pineapple bun (菠蘿油 , Cantonese: boh law yau, literally pineapple oil), where "oil" stands for the butter. Boh law yau often goes with drinks as a set meal and is popular among the male working class.
Note 3: Most cha chaan tengs charge an extra $1 or $2 for iced drinks, except soft drinks.
Note 4: Never do any cha chaan teng offer espresso or its derivatives (e.g. latte, cappuccino). Instead, they boil coffee in stainless steel kettles. The taste can be intense (or bitter, if the beans used are of marginal quality) when drunk straight. One might consider it espresso-like but it does not offer much of an aftertaste. In addition, crema is not seen.
Note 5: Iced coffee is sweetened with syrup unless specified to the waiter.
Note 6: Most Cha chaan tengs use canned, evaporated milk or condensed milk (rarer). Fresh milk is rarely used.
Table manners
Customers usually select their seats freely in a cha chaan teng, but in a crowded restaurant they have to share a table with strangers. During peak hours, waiters in a cha chan teng will seat their customers, "packing" as many customers into the restaurant as possible. This practice of sharing table is called 搭檯 (Cantonese Yale: dap tói, Jyutping: daap3 toi2) in Cantonese. For example, they will seat two groups of three customers at a six-seat table, to avoid having a pair of customers sitting with a group of three people, leaving one seat vacant. Sometimes already-seated customers have to move to accommodate the "packing".
In most Cha chan tengs, customers call out their orders to a waiter, who will jot down the prices of the ordered food (sometimes also the names of the food in local short forms; for instance, lemon tea is recorded as "0T", see simplifications on written Chinese in Hong Kong for details) on a piece of card/paper provided to every group of customers. After their meal over, customers present the card/paper at the cash register to pay the bill.
Set meals
A feature of the cha-chan-teng are the set meals. There are various sets throughout the day for breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. The lunch and dinner sets usually include a soup and a drink (generally there is an additional HK$2 charge for cold drinks, which some people regard as an unfair practice).
Other sets include the "nutritious set" (which usually comes with a bottle of milk), "light set", "constant set" (which is provided all day long and is not subject to change, thus "constant"), "fast set" and "special set".
However, these sets are very often similar in content - which My life as McDull, a McDull movie, poked fun at.
Variations
Other kinds of local restaurant related to cha chaan tengs in Hong Kong include the 餐室 (Cantonese: chaan sut, lit. meal chamber), the 冰室 (Cantonese: bing sut, lit. ice chamber), and the 冰廳 (Cantonese: bing teng , lit. ice dining room), which a provide lighter and a limited selection of food than the cha chaan teng.
In the old days, these eateries only sold different types of "ice", sandwiches and pasta but no rice plates. However, some of the restaurants bearing these titles today ignore the tradition, and provide all kinds of rice plates and even wonton noodles. Original chaan suds, bing suts and bing tengs, which can be regarded as the prototype of cha chaan tengs, are now scarce in Hong Kong.
Trivia
- An important part of Hong Kong culture, the cha chaan teng is featured in many Hong Kong movies and TV dramas, including the popular sitcom Virtues of Harmony (《皆大歡喜》). The TVB-made soap opera tells the story of a family who runs a cha chaan teng, usually boasting the egg tart and "silk-stocking milk tea" produced by them. Stephen Chow also played a cha chaan teng waiter in the 1998-comedy Lucky Guy (《行運一條龍》).
- Some beverage producers use the words cha chaan teng to name their products, such as "cha chaan teng milk tea" and "cha chaan teng lemon tea".
- Some cha chaan tengs operate in chains, such as Sun Chiu Kee (新釗記) and Tsui Wah (翠華).
See also
External Reference
[Sample album]
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