Autumn dining in Hong Kong: hairy crab, afternoon tea and more
There’s a particular time in Hong Kong when the air stops sticking to you. Not cool yet, not brisk, but finally merciful. You can walk outside without calculating shade or air-conditioned routes. It’s the start of the in-between season. The one where chefs sense a change before anyone else does. It's autumn.
At The Butterfly Room, executive pastry chef Jonathan Soukdéo marks the moment with a new autumn afternoon tea. At its centre is the Hokkaido milk tea flan, his latest creation and the kind of dessert that makes you slow down without meaning to. Soukdéo, who treats custard as both science and seduction, takes Hong Kong’s iconic milk tea and turns it into silk. It’s the colour of café au lait; creamy, elegant and gently caffeinated. This comes with the likes of truffled chestnut velouté, crab sandwiches, warm scones and vanilla brioche. It’s an afternoon indulgence that feels like a recalibration. Cool weather interpreted in cream, butter and a little bit of theatre.
At The Butterfly Room, Jonathan Soukdéo transforms Hong Kong’s beloved milk tea into a silken flan
Across the harbour, The Merchants is deep in its own autumnal ritual: hairy crab season. Chef Chen Tian-long’s nine-course journey is devoted to Taihu Lake’s most prized catch. It begins, as tradition demands, with the steamed crab. Dinner tables erupt with the quiet percussion of shell cracking and scraping. The reward is that subtle sweetness that defines hairy crab, the kind of flavour you can only earn by taking your time. This is followed by dishes where the hard work has been done for you: roe is folded into silky tofu broth, stirred through glass noodles and sealed in xiao long baos.
Meanwhile, on the cobbled slope of Shin Hing Street, Primo Posto is celebrating this brief reprieve from the heat with La Schiscetta di Milano, a love letter to the Italian lunch hour, written in focaccia. Each sandwich is a postcard from a different Milanese neighbourhood: pancetta and caramelised onion for Brera, mortadella and taleggio cream for Il Duomo, salami and pecorino for Porta Romana. They’re bold, flavourful and unmistakably Italian, the kind of sandwiches that taste best when eaten with both hands.
Mortadella and taleggio cream lend indulgent warmth to Il Duomo
Pancetta and caramelised onion bring smoky depth to the Brera sandwich
What connects these kitchens isn’t geography or cuisine, but instinct. They all sense that small, delicious pause between humidity and chill. The moment when Hong Kong weather becomes bearable again. It’s an intuition that filters outward, from chef to diner, from kitchen to craving. The city doesn’t slide neatly from one season to another; it shifts in appetite and in pace. You feel it in a craving for something braised, in the comfort of a slow broth, in ingredients that speak of patience and place.
Winter’s not here yet, but it’s coming—and you can taste the anticipation.
Each soup dumpling conceals a burst of crab roe and umami, a bite-sized tribute to autumn
Crab roe with green bean noodles offers richness anda bouncy texture
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