Where to eat the best wonton noodles in Hong Kong, and how the dumplings reached the city
Wonton noodles, one of Hong Kong’s most well-known dishes, have a long history in the city. We find the restaurants that serve the best
No bowl of wonton noodles is complete without dumplings made with shrimp or pork (or both) and wrapped in a thin, wheat wrapper.
A famous Hong Kong dish of Cantonese origin dating back thousands of years, one of the earliest mentions of wonton noodles in mainstream Hong Kong media was in a 1930 edition of Chinese-language newspaper Chinese Mail.
Wonton noodles had long been revered in Guangdong, in southern China, but were “entering a new era” in Hong Kong, a short passage reads.
It is unclear when wontons were first eaten, but the consensus is that they originated in Hunan province in central China. In their earliest iterations, wontons were filled with ground pork, a readily available ingredient in the inland province.
During the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), the people of Guangdong began incorporating river shrimp and dried flounder into the filling, and they started using thinner wonton skins and adding them to a bowl of bamboo pole noodles.