其記

Sometimes it takes a Hong Kong Chinese grandma to show you how it is REALLY done.
Some of the best ever local home cooked meals, you can only find in someone’s home, all done by granny. She’ll hit up the market same day, cook 3 to 5 dishes and one soup on a small stovetop kitchen in a space that is maybe ¼ of your typical Californian studio, within a short amount of time, and feed a family of 4 to 6 easy.
She relies on no recipes, and cooking comes naturally to her. Problem is that she doesn’t write this stuff down unless someone youtubes or instagrams her. So treasure your granny, please!
Moms nowadays? They have to take cooking classes (whether from Towngas) or watch Maria Cordero («fat mama») healthy cooking show to get ideas on how to incorporate barley or wheat flakes into cooking, and look as fabulous as her (think of a skinnier Oprah). Learning to cook fusion, European seems far more healthier than granny’s classic recipes with some of the more hardcore stuff. But at the end of the day, sentiment and tradition tastes far better than emulating the trends.
Yeah this particular grandma at 其記 (Kei Kee) which is some very plain and ordinary looking village style eatery located in the fishing village of Tai O, has a signature drink so legendary and earth shattering, very simple, yet profound.
It’s a properly chilled iceless lemon tea.
It’s a small portion, so you may want to get at least two glasses. The tea is brewed very nicely, and granny puts in some additional effort to slice up lemons without the zest and skin, remove the seeds, and crush the pulp and mix evenly with the tea. Arnold Palmer half tea half lemonade? Please… he can’t hold a candle to 其記 granny’s recipe!
So this mixture is pre-​chilled, and when you order it is then mixed with some liquid sweetener. You could request less, but the amount they put in is dead perfect.
When you have spent a good portion of the day exploring Tai O on foot, this is the perfect stop for a drink (assuming you don’t want the whacky herbal Buddha Fruit drink or the drink that tastes a little bit like hibiscus osmanthus and looks like purple cabbage juice called 紫貝天葵).
Awesome, refreshing, delicious, yet addictive!
They also have a limited selection of typical HK café like snacks.
But the chilled lemon tea? Blows away Sing Heung Yuen’s easily.
The caveat? Getting here from HK Island takes a couple hours :-(