Lamma Island worth a ferry trip for best of Hong Kong’s seafood

Follow the locals and board a ferry for the best of Chinese seafood at Hong Kong’s Lamma Island.

Seafood restaurants line the harbour at Sok Kwu Wan on Hong Kong’s Lamma Island.

Seafood. It’s the obsession with creatures of the deep (or of the ubiquitous fish farms) that Hong Kong people are crazy about. There’s a phrase in Cantonese that you get to learn pretty quickly when you live there, as I did for 25 years: sang yue, swimming fish. If it’s not sang, it’s second rate and about half the price.

That’s why you see fish in restaurants happily swimming around believing they’re in an aquarium when in reality they are on the menu for the next discerning (and cashed-up) seafood customer. Live fish are not cheap.

One of the best places to ­indulge your appetite for these doomed piscatorial specimens is Lamma Island, where live fish eateries abound. There’s a whole row of rough-and-ready village-style restaurants along the seafront where locals gather in groups to celebrate everything from birthdays and weddings to simply being a part of Hong Kong’s incomparable manic lifestyle. It’s a place that never stops, unless you’re captured and swimming in a tank.

One of the two main villages on Lamma is Sok Kwu Wan, where the ferry from Central disgorges hundreds of hungry visitors at ­dinnertime, or at any time at the weekend (tip: go there for lunch on a weekday). I’ve lost count of the restaurants there, but let’s say more than a dozen, each competing for the passing crowd.

Apart from local Hong Kongers, it’s a thriving scene for gweilos (inaccurate translation: foreigners) who forsake the pleasures of the crowded ferries by hiring junks (or using the company’s own boat) for “corporate entertainment”. As this generally has no budget or spending limit, it’s welcomed by the villagers, who are happy to open corporate accounts — and, if you’re smart, you can negotiate a 10 per cent discount as well as having your company name featured on a sign, in English or any other language you wish.

A typical meal will involve more courses than you can count: steamed grouper from the South China Sea or, likelier, a fish farm 100m away in the bay; wok-fried prawns; salt and pepper squid; mussels or clams (be warned); the usual chicken and beef stir fries; Chinese vegetables; all kinds of rice and noodles; exotic sea creatures that have no English name but look scary; even Australian abalone and crayfish if the company’s paying the bill. It’s a cornucopia of seafood delights.

To work up an appetite, the best strategy is to catch a ferry to the other side of Lamma Island to Yung Shue Wan, another pleasant village where some Australian expats run a decent cafe serving ­cappuccinos to get you started on the 90-minute walk. The relatively easy walk over the mountain is recommended as it offers some breathtaking views of the South China Sea to help you along the way.

On a recent revisit to Sok Kwu Wan, something amazing happened. I walked into the village that I last saw 20 years ago, looking for a feed and wondering if my ­favourite restaurant was still there. We used to call it the Lamma ­Hilton. Well, not only is it still there but the woman outside the Fu Kee caught sight of me and said: “Hello, Mr Hawkes, welcome back.” “Thank you, Irene,” I said. “What’s for lunch?” “I’d recommend the Australian snapper,” she replied, “better than the local fish from the bay.”