+1. Exactly this - and given that their selection is not that inspiring, I'd imagine that the average USian with access to Total Wine and Whole Foods could put together a better menu than this. Besides, going to a Belgian restaurant in HK feels a bit like going to Italy and eating Big Macs, just embrace the local stuff in all its weirdness.
You have to consider what travelers go through in real life. It sounds good to say you're going to live like a local, but no one is going to go to Hong Kong and eat Chinese food at every meal. On the day I plan to visit this Belgian joint, the wife and I are doing a food tour. We will have had all the Chinese food we need for one day. Also, many of the super-authentic local places are dirty, and people in Hong Kong still get things like typhoid from seafood and produce. "Embracing the weirdness" carelessly is to embrace bloody diarrhea and vomiting. You have to be careful what you do.
While I'm on the subject, we've done a lot of globetrotting over the last two years, and the sad truth is that "authentic" is generally mythical now. Paris, for example, is full of "authentic" French-cuisine places that serve slop for tourists. Fish and chips in Ireland are vastly inferior to Long John Silver's. I never appreciated Long John Silver's fish and chips until I went to Ireland. Long John's does a really excellent job.
We have tried to find real local food on our trips, and the situation is nothing like it was before nouvelle cuisine and the Internet. Everyone wants to cook flashy Gordon Ramsay food, so restaurants in many countries are a lot like the restaurants in Atlanta or St. Louis. I think Gordon Ramsay and the Food Network have done the world a lot of harm. Ramsay can't even cook a steak correctly, so his stars don't mean much to me. His scrambled eggs look like mucus with lumps.
If you Google Hong Kong restaurants, you find a lot of nouvelle BS, as well as Mexican and pizza joints. We plan to do our best to find good local food, but we're also happy to eat things like Indian and Thai.
As for McDonald's, my wife is not American, so we like to go to American chains during our trips. Lawry's in Singapore is awful. Ruth's is just like the ones here. McDonald's McMuffins and hash browns have been pretty dependable. Haven't tried the burgers since Paris in 1977. In the US, I only eat McDonald's burgers when I'm desperate, so I don't eat them abroad.
I have to say that the highly-touted Irish breakfast was a big letdown. One tiny egg and some lukewarm sausages, including one that was really just a giant spiced scab. Coffee with no cream; who drinks that? Cold beans from a can; why? When it comes to breakfast, America rules the globe. Biscuits and gravy. Waffles and real maple syrup (Europeans can't make it). Country ham and redeye gravy. Blueberry pancakes with tons of butter. We've had some nice breakfasts overseas, but nothing Cracker Barrel can't blow out of the water, and breakfast at my house would blow it all into the next galaxy. And an American invented eggs Benedict.
Bagels with Nova and cream cheese didn't exist until Americans put them together. Imagine a civilized brunch without them. Impossible!
All in all, our travels have made me appreciate what we have in America. Even the foreign food is often better here. Tex-Mex, for example, is way better than real Mexican food, and our pizza is incredible. And I haven't had decent barbecue anywhere outside the States.
but anyway my bill was $ 400 US and it was just me by myself. It was a neat town then though ... Subway is the best I've been on anywhere .
