The real test is always in the milk tea

Hong Kong-style milk tea is two-thirds tea and one-third evaporated milk. Provided to China Daily

How do you judge a Hong Kong-style restaurant? First you should ask for a cup of milk tea. It is the most traditional beverage from Hong Kong, made with black tea and evaporated milk that must be a popular and relatively expensive brand imported from the Netherlands.

The ratio of the traditional Hong Kong-style milk tea is 150 ml tea with 60 ml milk. In a perfect mix, the drink is smooth, soft and rich in flavor.

However, due to inflation, some owners of restaurants have quietly reduced the amount of evaporated milk to cut costs.

To get a cup of milk tea with the original taste is difficult enough in Hong Kong, and it's getting to be a challenge in Shanghai.

Recently on weibo, a Hong Kong-style restaurant has been frequently mentioned. Lots of positive comments were left in cyber space.

"The fried pork chop tastes extremely good," a netizen named Colinxu wrote.

The owner of the restaurant also likes to use weibo to communicate with customers, and thank them for the nice comments.

The dining hall, Fu Family Hong Kong Restaurant, is located on South Shaanxi Road, close to Julu Road, a quiet area that is an enclave of cozy wine bars and dazzling designer shops for clothes and shoes.

The restaurant has two floors fronted by bright, wide glass windows, and is kept tidy and clean.

Some customers prefer to sit on the upper floor as they can enjoy the street view while eating.

"I bet our milk tea is the best in town," says 49-year-old Zhu Yongqi, owner of the restaurant, who was a frequent traveler to Hong Kong for business in the early 1990s. She started the restaurant at the end of 2010.

Born in southern Fujian province, Zhu has strict rules about the quality of her ingredients. The fried pork chop, a popular dish in the restaurant, was once pulled off the menu for eight months because the quality of the pork wasn't up to snuff.

"My reputation matters," she says.

Some ingredients are imported, such as the black tea (for milk tea) from Sri Lanka, and shrimp crackers and curry powder from Malaysia. Sometimes loyal customers will bring her special ingredients from their hometown, Zhu says happily.

The restaurant offers old-fashioned Hong Kong food, such as the grilled sandwiches and chocolate drink from the 1960s.

"I am so proud that some Hong Kong customers said that they found the taste of old Hong Kong in my canteen," she says, "That makes me feel I am a great success."