So far I’ve been spending most of my time in Tsim Sha Tsui near the hotel and conference center, but last night I mustered a group of colleagues to cab to the other end of Kowloon to visit the literally-named Pig Baby Shop. I was modestly anxious about the trip because up until late in the day I thought I’d arranged for us to visit a different, highly-reviewed shop called ‘Piggy Grill‘ but after several cryptic emails with the owner finally clued into the fact that Piggy Grill is out of business and Pig Baby Shop made the canny but creepy choice to hijack the URL of a defunct-but-well-regarded restaurant. (See, for yourself… visit piggygrill.com and seconds later you’ll be browsing pigbabyshop.com).
Anyway, much to my relief the place did exist and was indeed a suckling-pig restaurant, not a casino or bar or gang of bandits standing under a pig-shaped pirate flag.
pig, on arrival
Ordering was fun, like singing a children’s song: “One pig, one duck, two pigeons…”
My photos, alas, are not great. There were 11 of us and I managed to crop nearly everyone out of the shot. Also, the food arrived gradually so there’s no footage of total spread.
I guess I’ve never faced a suckling pig before, so I’m not clear if we got just the tasty bits or if we got /all/ of the pig and all they have is tasty bits. It was quite a bit like the first course of a peking duck — just crispy skin and sweet sauce, no actual meat or bones to distract from the fat.
Pig, seconds later
For me the highlight of the trip was that it was in Sham Shui Po, which is a real neighborhood that looks like a real city! I’ve been spending too much time in shopping centers and university campuses, it was nice to see some serious streets and buildings. This was much more how I’d envisioned Kowloon — dilapidated buildings covered in gated shops crammed together with moving sidewalks and escalators rolling in every direction.
Me in Sham Shui Po, posing in front of a dozen or so city busses