Surprise (This week's Photo Hunt theme)

As my well-travelled foodie friend Daisann has noted, there is a saying about the Cantonese -- Hong Kong's majority ethnic group -- that "they'll eat anything with four legs that isn't a chair, anything with wings that isn't an airplane"! In fairness, she also noted that "the truth is that most Hong Kong people I know are fussy eaters". To which I'd add: often more fussy with regards to quality than actual range; and not likely to be put off eating something merely from looks alone.

Skeptical? Behold the first two photos of this Photo Hunt entry then. Seriously now, aren't you just a little bit surprised that people would eat them for pleasure -- and in the case of the mantis shrimp, even if not the more humble Hakka delicacy (consisting of a wild green vegetable-beans mix encased in thick dark dough), pay good money (HK$120 for one of those suckers!) for the privilege too?

As for the bottom two photos: yes, Virginia, for all of Hong Kong's population being less than 1% "white" (the term preferred to Caucasian in official government records!), certain foods that many people think of as "Western", including macaroni, luncheon meat (AKA spam) and garlic bread, have become a part of regular Hong Kongers' diets. (Though it is not every day -- and thus came as an amusing surprise when it happened once at an eatery here --that garlic bread gets served in the kind of bamboo containers that one tends to associate with dim sum!) :D