Ah...this is a very cool post. But also makes me feel very sad. And very, very old. And makes me remember being very, very, very drunk. What a blend of emotions for a Monday morning lol
6 months ago | 61
If the restaurant had some Indian dishes, is it possible that one of the brown sauces is tamarind chutney?
6 months ago
| 102
I would die for a Chinese Cooking Demystified CHUNGKING EXPRESS video
6 months ago | 136
1. Sesame sauce (tsi ma jeung), 2. tianjiang (t'im jeung) the brown thick sweet sauce, 3. a cooked sweetened soy sauce (si yau) usually prepared by the shop, 4. chilli sauce (laat jeung). Lee Kum Lee does these four main types of sauces. They go with the white rice flour noodles and cheungfan (rice sheets) that Chinese folks eat for breakfast and other times of day.
6 months ago
| 19
This video by Accented Cinema talks about the location, which is no longer a restaurant: https://youtu.be/Qfc83-82ogY?si=cAC8idjhgqL1uTsj
6 months ago
| 37
I used to go there often on a last minute dash to get the last Lamma island ferry. Unfortunately I was always too inebriated to notice the sauces. Damn good Kebabs though
6 months ago | 14
This is the crossover content I didn't know I needed Can we expect a Criterion Closet appearance soon?
6 months ago | 20
I’d hazard a guess one was HP Sauce and the other was HP fruity sauce just from knowing the British pallet from that time.
6 months ago
| 18
Small world. I was there myself in around 2007 or 2008. It was a couple of blocks from ChungKing Mansions I think. Took a selfie but didn't eat there. Massive fan of the film. "Ever been so crazy in love with someone that you eat 30 cans of expired pineapple?"
6 months ago | 3
So glad to see that all the Wong Kan-Wai's fans are assembled here
5 months ago | 0
honestly the best way is for someone close to make the steps in finding anyone who worked or created something there. big task for curiosity, but it IS history…albeit of questionable importance. anyways, educated guesses are as good as anything if the context is more fully fleshed out
6 months ago | 3
The office of the company that did inexpensive packages on the Trans-Siberian had their Hong Kong office (in 2000) in the building named in the title. I saw the movie but don't remember details of the restaurant from it. There was nice street food on the ground floor of the building. Please forgive my nostalgia and free associating.
6 months ago | 1
I ate there a lot (HK resident from 1997-2003 plus travelled there often in the 80s and in the last 15 years) - I do not remember ANY Chinese style sauces or menu items at Midnight Express at all. It was solely a kabob / wrap stand. I don’t even remember the “chefs salad” that Takeshi’s cop character keeps ordering in Chungking Express. There was a couple weird year stretch where a Dutch company tried to turn that corner of LKf into an automat before its current iteration as a 7-11
6 months ago
| 3
Holy Shit please make a Chungking Express video. It one of the greatest movies ever
6 months ago | 3
My mom says: "many sauces have these colors! they can be chili sauce, sweet sauce, sesame sauce, oyster sauce, soy sauce, sa cha sauce ( which is a kind of satay sauce or barbecue sauce) so it’s hard to tell what they exactly are"
6 months ago | 1
Maybe sweet soy sauce? Sweet and viscous sauce always reminds me of sweet soy sauce (kecap manis) here in SEA
6 months ago | 1
Chinese Cooking Demystified
Calling any Hong Kong old timers - Cantonese or Westerner. Was looking for some information about the old snack shop "Midnight Express" on Lan Kwai Fong, the one featured in Wong Kan-wai's Chungking Express.
A patron asked us a question that's been nagging on me: you can see a clear lineup of sauces in the shot below. What are the sauces?
You can see the same sauce lineup in the second attached picture circa the year ~2000. From what I can tell, Midnight Express was a mixed Western/Indian/General Kebab shop. It was solidly replaced by Ebenezer's as the drunk tank of choice by the time I got to HK, but some of these recognizable to me: mint sauce, chili sauce, garlic sauce. One is obviously ketchup.
But there are a couple viscous, brownish sauces that *really* look like stuff like tianjiang, the 'sweet sauce' used on Cantonese rice noodle rolls.
I cannot seem to find the old menu from googling. Does anyone know what exactly was on offer at Midnight Express? Were there any Cantonese offerings? What exactly were the Western offerings (besides, of course, Chef's Salad)?
6 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 852