EDMONTON - Chip Tang remembers what it was like to be raised in a family-run bakery. Or at least, his fingers remember what it was like.
His parents, Yui Chuen and Lai Tin Tang, started Hong Kong Bakery in Calgary in 1977, opening a second shop in Edmonton in 1986. Chip recalls being about seven years old, and spending time after school with his siblings, hand-pressing the pastry for egg tarts into shell shapes to be sold in the bakery.
Incorporating the whole family into the business, says Chip, is “a Chinese tradition.” As is hard work. The Hong Kong Bakery on 97th Street is open 365 days a year, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Today, Chip, 42, is the only member of his family still working in the Hong Kong Bakery, his parents having retired some years ago now. The Calgary store is long gone, but Tang still prides himself on providing an “authentic Hong Kong style” bakery to the Edmonton market, in not one, but two locations (5407 Gateway Boulevard and 10649 97th Street).
When I think of Hong Kong style sweets, I think egg tarts, perhaps because the delicate yellow custard cup is, to me, the most familiar element of a dim sum meal. Some food historians say egg tarts came to Hong Kong via British colonialists. Other suggests that egg tarts are a close relative of the Portuguese custard tart (nata) and may have travelled to Hong Kong via Macau, a Portuguese colony.
Regardless, after spending some time with Chip, I quickly discovered egg tarts are but one specialty of Hong Kong Bakery. He notes that numerous international influences can be seen in the store, including that of the French, who inspired the sweet, buttery, croissant-like loaf of white bread that Hong Kong Bakery is known for, along with its coconut raisin bread. All the baked goods are made from scratch.
Wedding cakes are big business, fluffy affairs made from sponge cake with fruit cocktail in the middle, and iced with whipped cream. Dim sum items are also wildly popular, particularly around dinner time and on weekends, and include bamboo or lotus leaves stuffed with rice and meat, plus barbecue pork buns, pineapple buns, red bean buns and buns stuffed with lotus seed paste.
Edmontonians may already be familiar with Chip’s green onion cakes sold frozen in both shops, and made fresh at the Hong Kong Bakery’s booth during Taste of Edmonton Festival in Churchill Square. The two stores also sells exotic ice creams, such as mango, taro root, green tea and coconut.
I left the store with a new, favourite Chinese snack, called a chopstick doughnut. It’s deep fried bread formed into long sticks, big as rulers. The salty, savoury flavour was enormously satisfying, and I hear they are great dipped in coffee. Egg tarts drift further, ever further from my mind.
lfaulder@edmontonjournal.com
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