Artist Stanley Chow remembers Hong Kong borscht from growing up. It’s not something you generally see on restaurant menus, he says, because it’s usually a homestyle dish. Something your mum or your grandma would cook, and leave to bubble away on the stove for hours and hours on end.
Made with tomatoes, celery, carrots, cabbage and slow-stewed beef, it’s pretty far from the earthy Russian version of borscht, the star of which is beetroot, but is likely a throwback to when Russian immigrants came to China.
But here it is on the menu at Hong Kong Choi in Salford, which on this Tuesday lunchtime is noisy and impressively full for an out of town spot, each table laden with dishes in various stages of demolition. So we have to order it, obviously.
