The café set

How the café does it

1. A 常餐 is four things on one tray: a small bowl of soup noodles, an egg dish, a slice of buttered toast or a soft roll, and a hot drink. 早餐 is the same formula served until about eleven; the 常餐 is served all day.
2. A餐, B餐 and C餐 are the café's fixed permutations so a tiny kitchen can batch: the textbook A餐 is ham macaroni soup, two fried eggs, a buttered roll and coffee or tea; the other letters swap the noodles for satay beef instant noodles, luncheon meat and egg noodles or shredded pork and snow-cabbage vermicelli, and the egg for scrambled eggs or an omelette. 快餐 and 午餐 add a rice plate; the 下午茶餐 (2:30 to 5:30) is a toast or chicken wings with a drink; the 全餐 is the biggest combination on the board.
3. The ordering code: 走冰 (cold drink, no ice), 茶走 (milk tea with condensed milk in place of evaporated milk and sugar), 飛砂走奶 (coffee or tea with no sugar and no milk), 飛邊 (crusts cut off the toast or sandwich), 走青 (no spring onion), 反蛋 (fried egg flipped, yolk half set), 熟蛋 (yolk cooked through), 烘底 (sandwich bread toasted first), 滾蛋 (egg poached in the soup instead of fried). Cold drinks cost a little more than hot, a rule left over from the 冰室 days when ice was bought in from an ice works and the glass was bigger.
4. At home a 常餐 is a fifteen-minute sequence, not four recipes. Put water on first: a kettle for the tea or coffee, a small pot for the noodles. Make the drink and let it stand; the drinks bar always sends the drink out first.
5. In the frying pan cook the noodle topping first, fry the luncheon meat or stir-fry the satay beef, and set it aside; put the soup sachet in the bowl and make it up with hot water.
6. In the same pan fry two eggs or scramble them; toast the bread in the toaster or at the side of the pan and butter it hot. The noodles go into the boiling water last, two and a half to three minutes, so they do not drink the soup and go soft while the eggs fry.
7. To the table: noodles into the soup bowl with the topping on top; eggs and toast on one plate; the drink beside them. Everything goes out together, the way it comes on a café tray. A family 常餐 is often only two of the four parts, luncheon meat and egg noodles with milk tea, or ham macaroni with toast; all four is the weekend treat.
8. What to pair: for the noodles, satay beef instant noodles, luncheon meat and egg noodles, shredded pork and snow-cabbage vermicelli or ham macaroni soup; for the egg, two fried eggs or scrambled; for the bread, buttered toast, a condensed-milk-and-butter toast or a soft roll; for the drink, milk tea, coffee or 鴛鴦, and in summer an iced lemon tea with no ice.

Take care

• Contains egg, wheat (noodles, bread), milk (butter, evaporated milk) and soy (the noodle seasoning); the topping contains pork or beef, see each part's page. Milk tea and coffee contain caffeine.

The story

The 常餐 is what a Hong Kong person means by breakfast: the tray with the noodles, the egg, the toast and the tea that a 茶餐廳 serves from six in the morning until it closes, lettered A to E so the waiter can shout one syllable to the kitchen, and whose A餐 is best (華星, 澳牛, the corner 冰室) is one of the city's standing conversations. The 茶餐廳 is the child of the post-war 冰室, the ice room, whose licence allowed only cold drinks, toast and cakes; the 茶餐廳 licence of the 1960s let one shop fry an egg, boil noodles and serve a rice plate under one roof, 蘭香閣 in Central (1946) was the first recorded to trade under the name, and 蘭芳園 (1952) is the oldest still open. For Hong Kong families in Australia it is the meal the children ask for on Saturday morning, because it tastes exactly as it did at home.

Same counter

Satay beef instant noodlesLuncheon meat and egg noodlesShredded pork and snow-cabbage vermicelli soup

Lo Fo Tong is cultural food-heritage reference, not medical advice. If you are pregnant, unwell or on medication, talk to your doctor or registered practitioner before changing what is in the pot.