What Yan Dining Room chef Eva Chin eats in Hong Kong

Yan Dining Room may be the city’s most exciting tasting restaurant. Operating out of Hong Shing’s private dining room, it has a faintly clandestine energy, but that’s only part of the draw. What makes dining here special is that it feels like a dinner party: all 26 guests enjoying the same course at the same time. The atmosphere is loud, communal and intimate, the food personal and precise.

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At its core, chef Eva Chin’s cooking is about translating memory. Her ever-changing neo-Chinese menus aren’t fusion so much as a personal archive—dishes pulled from childhood, travel, and years spent cooking in Europe, Hong Kong and mainland China, then refined and modernized. The cooking at Yan is about “bringing nostalgia into the future,” as she puts it. Not strict recreations but riffs: something half remembered, half reimagined.

Lately, Chin has been craving certain dishes from Hong Kong. She grew up bouncing between her grandparents’ place in the US and her childhood home in Hong Kong. She even did two years of high school there—not just to lock in the language but to immerse herself in Chinese literature and history in a way she couldn’t elsewhere. Later, from 2013 to 2016, she returned to work in fine-dining kitchens across the region.

Toronto has no shortage of Cantonese options, but Chin was craving the originals. The blistering, smoky intensity you only get from street-side wok burners; offal soup served in an alley; fermented clam sauce, pungent and funky; milk tea pulled through a silk stocking; macaroni soup topped with ham. The lines, the brusque service, the fog, the humidity. She missed it all. So, after seven years without a visit, she went to Hong Kong to sate her cravings, and find inspiration for Yan’s next menu. We tagged along.

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Breakfast Set A from Australia Dairy Company

The average customer visit to this classic cha chaan teng is just 10 minutes long. The pace isn’t accidental—it’s enforced. Service here has a way of moving you along whether you’re ready or not. “People think the service is rude. It’s not—it’s efficient. It’s how Hong Kong moves,” explains Chin, who grew up coming here with her family for breakfast. Diners are likely to be seated with strangers, expected to order without hesitation, then gently ushered out the door when they’re done.

The menu is essentially three set breakfasts: A (the signature hybrid), B (Western leaning) and C (more traditionally Chinese). “Breakfast Set A represents who I am—both Western and Chinese,” says Chin. Within minutes, the food hits the table: wok-fried scrambled eggs (wet but not runny, and extra creamy from added yolks), thick-cut crustless white bread slathered in butter, and a bowl of ham-topped macaroni soup in a savoury broth with a pork-and-chicken base. “It’s a Chinese broth with Western ingredients—the kind of hybrid that defines Hong Kong,” says Chin.

Tofu pudding from Kung Wo Beancurd Factory

According to Chin, dau fu fah (cold tofu pudding topped with brown sugar) is “pure, simple, cheap and perfect.” For the past 133 years, this two-storefront operation (the term “factory” is charmingly hyperbolic) has been turning out fresh tofu and other soy-based products daily. The retail side is stocked with shelf-stable goods like pungent fermented tofu paste. Next door is the dine-in side, with a kitchen that pumps out comforting plates of crisped tofu, tofu puffs and bean-curd-topped congee. Chin, though, comes here for two things: the pudding (which she prefers to eat cold, though you can order it hot) and the fresh soy milk, which has an earthy nuttiness to it that Silk could never dream of replicating.

Black sesame paste from Heartwarming

Chin is anti-shortcut, which is why she’s a fan of Heartwarming’s black sesame paste. It’s made the long way: stone-ground, no fillers, no powders. “People are always trying to find shortcuts,” she says. That’s one of the things she loves about Hong Kong: it’s full of stubborn holdouts doing things the slow way even as the city speeds past them—and pure sesame dessert production is one of those dying arts. But the difference is immediate. “You can really taste it,” says Chin. The paste lends a deep, intense nutty flavour to everything it touches: soft serve, puddings, soy milk or iced tea.

Sourdough egg tarts from Bakehouse

For all her love of stubborn artisanal holdouts, Chin isn’t precious about it, which is how these sourdough egg tarts make the list. In Hong Kong, you’re either a cookie crust or a pastry crust person. Chin is firmly in the former camp, but she makes an exception here. Bakehouse’s four-bite tarts land every time: shatteringly crisp laminated shells give way to custard that’s barely set, soft and glossy. “A perfect egg tart should feel like the liquid set only seconds ago,” says Chin.

Hong Kong–style milk tea from My Cup of Tea

For Chin, most GTA milk teas don’t nail the velvety mouthfeel. My Cup of Tea sets the benchmark. Here, a blend of Ceylon and Assam black teas is brewed strong, then strained through a cloth “silk stocking” for that signature smoothness. Evaporated milk softens the bitterness, adding sweetness and body. On a hot day, Chin might double-fist a milk tea and a HK-style lemon iced tea. She runs hot, especially in Hong Kong’s near-constant humidity, and likes her drinks frosty.

Sweet-and-sour pork from Go Go Restaurant

While Toronto can manage decent versions of many Hong Kong staples, some dishes are nearly impossible to track down. These tend to be rare even in Hong Kong. Go Go Restaurant’s sweet-and-sour pork is one of them. On paper, it shouldn’t work: deep-fried pork served on ice. And yet, not only does it work, it’s brilliant. The kitchen flash-fries and glazes pork shoulder, then chills it just long enough for the sugar coating to set into a thin, glassy shell. The finished product is all contrast—shatter then softness, sweet then savoury. “This is very much an ’80s dish, a banquet showpiece that’s nostalgic but not gimmicky,” says Chin, who has never seen it on a menu in Toronto. “It takes a real command of the wok to pull this off.”

Char siu from Chukfo Taipan

When in Hong Kong, you must eat Cantonese barbecue—no debate. For Chin, that means an order of Chukfo Taipan’s char siu, which she rates among the best in the city.

Sesame-skin suckling pig from Moon Bay

Another porky must is this sesame-skin suckling pig, so called for its finely blistered skin, pricked so precisely that its bubbles are the size of sesame seeds. “This is where I take everyone who visits from out of town,” says Chin, who insists that Moon Bay’s roast piglet is the best in Hong Kong. A highlight of her most recent trip was getting a lesson from the restaurant’s roast master.

The pig is mounted whole on a long spit, then worked over heat in stages—rotated, blasted with a torch to hit every inch of skin, and moved into and out of ovens. As it roasts, fat renders through thousands of pinpricks, tightening the skin into a thin, glassy crust. The result: no big bubbles, just a delicate crackling and juicy meat.

Beef and potatoes and deep-fried Bombay duck from Tin Cheung

Toronto’s street food game is famously lacklustre. Hong Kong, meanwhile, built a reputation on curbside brilliance—though, in recent decades, its open-air kitchens (known as dai pai dongs) have been legislated to near extinction. The few that remain have cult followings. Tin Cheung is one of them: an old-school dai pai dong and a haunt for off-the-clock chefs. Chin and her peers are always impressed by the kitchen’s wok hei (Cantonese for “breath of the wok,” that fleeting high-heat essence you get only from a smoking-hot wok). “Wok hei isn’t about smoke hitting you in the face,” says Chin. “It’s an aroma that lifts the original flavour instead of covering it.” She thinks Tin Cheung’s command of the wok shows up best in this beef and potatoes dish.

“People think beef and potatoes is simple—it’s not,” she says. “It can be greasy, flat and over-sauced. Here, it’s perfect: no excess oil, just enough black pepper, everything clean and balanced.” Highly skilled wok chefs are becoming rare—it’s physically punishing work and a hard skill to learn, let alone master. In Toronto, Chin notes, there are only a handful of kitchens that nail the wok hei, and Hong Shing is one of them. Even in Hong Kong, it can be hit or miss. So, when a kitchen gets that elusive high-heat char right night after night, Chin gets a little evangelical about it.

Another Tin Cheung dish Chin gets excited about is the lightly battered deep-fried Bombay duck—which actually has nothing to do with waterfowl and everything to do with fish. It’s an Indo-Pacific fish species with an unusually soft and light skeleton, so delicate that you can eat it whole. “When it’s fried right, it eats like custard,” says Chin. “The bones are so soft you don’t even notice them.” You can get almost anything in Toronto, but there are some proteins common in Hong Kong, including this fish, that are nearly impossible to find.

Icy fruit bowls from Golden Hall Dessert

You can find just about any fruit at Toronto grocers, but what’s flown in from Asia is usually picked while still green. In Hong Kong, the fruit tastes sweeter—allowed to ripen on the tree since it doesn’t need to survive a 12,500-kilometre journey. One of Chin’s favourite ways to eat this phenomenal fruit is ice cold. She’s been ordering the icy fruit bowls from Golden Hall Dessert since middle school. They’re topped with sago (tapioca pearls) and a mix of jellies (longan, coconut and grass). Chin used to come here with her dad, who would opt for a base of durian or red bean. She usually switches it up depending on what’s in peak season—maybe longan, maybe mango.

Cuttlefish soup and fish balls from Wong Ming Kee

In a residential pocket of Kowloon, there’s an unfussy neighbourhood spot that Chin visited four times over her five-day trip. It’s not flashy—blue vinyl booths, photos of the specials taped to the walls, fluorescent lighting—but it buzzes until 1 a.m. “The owner refuses to use frozen cuttlefish. Only fresh. Same with the noodles—they’re delivered from the next-door rice noodle factory, fresh, every morning. And if the restaurant runs out, they run out,” says Chin, who is obsessed with Wong Ming Kee’s cuttlefish soup. It’s a delicate broth made from fish and pork bones, electrified by house-made garlic oil. “This tastes like comfort,” she says. “Simple as that.”

Wong Ming Kee also makes excellent dace fish balls, which are formed from mud carp, a white-fleshed freshwater fish. Springy and elastic, they’re kind of texture that Cantonese cooks prize. Chin translates it as “toothsomeness”: that satisfying bounce and resistance in each bite. But what really excites her aren’t the fish balls themselves—it’s the house-made salt-preserved clam sauce that comes with them. “It’s intensely funky and salty and so perfect with the delicate dace,” she says. “The art of making sauces like this is dying.”

The first-class cheeseburger and dan dan noodles from Cathay Pacific airline

Raised between continents, Chin grew up a Cathay Pacific kid—one of those unaccompanied minors racking up frequent-flyer miles before she could legally order a drink. So, when she got upgraded on her recent trip, the first thing she did was order the airline’s mythical first-class cheeseburger, a dish with far more lore than any in-flight meal has a right to. “When I see a cheeseburger on a plane, I’m going to challenge you,” she says, because airline food is rarely the place for ambition, and a burger at 35,000 feet sounds like hubris. Against all odds, it’s not just good—it’s great: juicy and hot on a toasted brioche bun. “I’ve been wanting to eat this burger for years. There’s so much myth and hype around it,” she says. “It really is a perfect burger.”

The other Cathay Pacific staple Chin swears by is the dan dan noodles in the airport lounge. They’re fuel for the 4 a.m. red-eye back to YYZ, and she downs them with a smile before boarding. This is how dishes get onto the menu at Yan: something sticks, follows her home, and shows up reworked and refined. In this case, the last thing she ate in Hong Kong became the first to hit the pass. Chin’s version is a cheffy glow-up: Sichuan red peppercorn beef cheek ragù; thin alkaline egg noodles; and a roasted hazelnut, peanut and sesame dan dan sauce, finished with scallion, cilantro and za cai (the pickled stem of mustard plants). A dish like this may start as nostalgia, but it never ends there—she’ll challenge it but still make it an ode to the original, turning the memory into something new.