Ahead of the publication of her memoir about growing up in a Chinese takeaway, Angela Hui reminisces about her trips to Hong Kong and highlights the hotspots on her hit list for her next trip
Pig heads dangling on meat hooks and bags of live frogs croaking to be freed persist in Angela Hui’s memories of trips back to Hong Kong when she was young. Along with her brothers she would traipse through the wet markets of Hong Kong, hot on the heels of her parents as they stocked up on items to take home to use in the family Chinese takeaway restaurant in rural Wales.
Growing up above the family takeaway, and spending a childhood behind its counter, Hui says she learned some valuable life lessons, from communication and teamwork to how to deal with (at times difficult) customers. But she never thought that she would end up in a career related to food.
“Food wasn’t an obvious calling. I really didn’t want to have anything to do with food, especially being surrounded by food all day and night and having worked within hospitality from such a young age,” she says. “I was really put off by how physically taxing it is. I wanted to do something completely different on my own terms.” But while Hui started out in fashion and music journalism, she soon fell back in love with food and her writing turned to the topic.
After her parents sold their Chinese takeaway in 2018, Hui started reflecting on its importance and the instrumental role it played in her life. This led to her debut book, Takeaway, a memoir about her childhood behind the counter, published on July 21, 2022. “I wanted my book to celebrate and to tell the story of Chinese takeaways in the UK and as a way to capture that moment in time,” she says.
One of the most memorable dishes on the menu at Hui’s parents’ Chinese takeaway in Wales was the Chicken Maryland, or a number 74. “It was definitely a dish created to suit Welsh locals’ tastes,” says Hui. “It’s made up of a piece of breadcrumbed chicken breast, bacon, battered sausage, peas, onion rings and a bag of chips, which is probably the least Chinese thing on the menu.” It was rarely a welcome order. “It had so many different components and it was really annoying to make,” says Hui, but it was part of the distinctiveness of Chinese takeaway food in the UK. “It’s a ‘bastardised’ version of what actual Chinese food is, but I think British Chinese food is its own unique thing and a product of Chinese immigrants making do with what ingredients were available to them.”
Hui is unlikely to find a Chicken Maryland on the menus of a Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong, but she relishes her trips to visit family in the city, and is longing to return, having last visited in 2019. Here, she shares her picks for the places she'll be heading to first.