Project Bread

Hong Kong's food space is usually seen as very vibrant, with a large variety of fusion food from around the world. Even Hong Kong food itself has quite a variety. But what about their bread scene? Hmm, I wonder... Ha, I mean what dumb person would go around Hong Kong for a day just to survey Hong Kong's pastry scene? Well, I did. Here's what I found,

Some background before going forward, this story started when a friend of mine headed to Beijing and started sending back pictures of the food there. He boasted how Beijing food tasted far better than those in hk and that got us started in a conversation regarding the culinary scene in hk. After a while, the discussion went into the pastry industry in Hong Kong and boy did I have a lot to say. 

 Hong Kong's pastry industry, in my opinion, to put it mildly, had constantly been disappointing regarding their bread. Low quality, low variety, lazily thought of bread, high price and tasteless a lot of them. Hell, I feel like 20% of all bread I see when I enter a local bakery is just meat floss in some bread or sausage bread. Don't take it wrong. It did taste good before but after a while of constantly seeing the same bread over and over again, it's gotten bleh. It's sad. Compare this to Turkey where I lived for 6 years, that place had such a big variety of bread and never got bored of their bread types. Simit, pide, etc. Very delicious.

Then after that discussion, I thought "Hmm does HK bread actually such or am I just not seeing the full picture?". And at that moment I thought "I should go around HK and check out the bread scene". So I did alongside a fellow bread enthusiast friend. [Yes, I actually asked a friend to accompany me for a day just to look at bakaries] 

Starting off in shau kei wan, we stopped by every bakery towards Fortress Hill hitting places in Sai wan ho, Tai Koo, Quarry Bay and North Point. After that, we hit bakeries in Causeway Bay and then finally Tsim Sha Tsui and K11. In total, we visited over 40 bakeries including, both small bakeries and large cooperate bakeries and evaluated things like variety, price, uniqueness, creativity and so on.

Best Bakery Overall - A1 Bakery

Overall, it was no doubt the best. Good variety feels creative, and affordable, a good mix of sweet and salty stuff and tastes quite good. Also don't skip out on the filling and actually tasted high quality. So yea, I think this is the best bakery overall from the ones we visited. However, if you enjoy Hong Kong-style bread, A1 might not be for you as that selection is very limited. My personal recommendation is their curry bread. Very tasty bread.

Best Home-Grown Bakery - Arome 

Arome has part of the Maxim bakery group but at the same time, it's able to offer something new. The problem with Maxim bread was that it always tasted so cheap. Always very conservative with the filling they put inside. Arome still does away with this mostly and actually tastes quite good. Not to mention good variety at an affordable price. My personal recommendation would be the garlic sausage bread. 

Best Unique Bakery - Levain Bakery [Quarry Bay]

This bakery isn’t exactly well known with a grand total of 4 bakeries in HK but the one I visited in quarry bay was quite grand in a way. I'm not sure if their other locations look that way so I just designated the Quarry Bay one as being most unique. It had an open kitchen where you can see the chefs make the pastries right there and there. Decor makes you feel comfy like you're at home and the variety is quite abundant. The only downside was the price which was quite pricey but I guess that's to be expected. 

Biggest Range and affordability - AEON Bakery 

AEON Bakery only exists in, well, AEON so not very accessible but it has a large variety of pastries 

My personal recommendation for this would be the danish chocolate but that might just be my childhood bias. I grew up eating it and has always been a comfort food for me.

Honourable Mentions

Gonna give honourable mentions to a few bakeries we saw. First, Panash Bakery in Tai Koo Apita. Almost beat AEON's Bakery but only lost cause they had less variety of bread on offer. Mostly the same things however they were more creative so others may like it more. The second honourable mention goes to Yamazaki Bakery. It gave off A1 Bakery vibes but was a bit worse with everything. More expensive, has less variety, doesn't taste as good, etc. The third and final honourable mention goes to TARDEMAH Bakery in K11 serving Korean pastries. It didn't have a wide range of pastries but it did make that up with the uniqueness of what they were offering. Quite a few different Korean baked goods and ones you won't find anywhere in HK I think. I would recommend a visit if you're in K11.

As for convenience store bread, it was ok I guess. There was a larger variety than I thought there would be but only a few were appealing like roll cakes, bread with cream stuffing, etc. Dessert Cakes. I guess it makes sense as people go to convenience stores to find something filling, not tasty.

My overall thought? Eh, I still Hong Kong's bread scene is pretty lacklustre. Variety is very lacklustre and easily bored of them. Also tastes for a lot of them feel quite weak. Maybe I'm biased as I grew up eating European/Middle Eastern-type bread but who knows? I just hope Hong Kong's bread scene improves. Either way, it was an informative trip and something I have no idea how I'm supposed to explain to my parents. (Fyi, my friend bought this frog plush during the trip and named it Dounut. Not sure why I mentioned that but here's a picture. Have fun bread eating!)