Hong Kong foodie

Matthew Bell tries the world's cheapest Michlin-starred meal

The Hong Kong skyline (AFP/Getty Images)

Tommy puts two glasses of wine on the table and asks me to guess which is which. One is a chablis, the other a rioja. Obviously, one is white and the other red.

But what if you can't see the wine and they're exactly the same temperature and you're sitting in pitch darkness in the back room of a Hong Kong shopping mall? Not so easy. Welcome to Wine Tasting in the Dark, a new experience designed to challenge your taste buds. For 90 minutes you abandon sight, the idea being that your other senses are heightened. It's the latest venture by Dialogue in the Dark, a social enterprise that aims to improve awareness of blindness, which has also launched Dining in the Dark. Only at the end did I discover that Tommy, who had seamlessly been serving, is visually impaired. A sobering experience. It also demolishes my long-held belief that I know something about wine. "That's obviously the rioja," I bellow into the blackness. Of course, it's the chablis.

Humiliation isn't what I came to Hong Kong to experience. Mind you, nor is European wine. But then, what did I expect of this former colony, clinging to the edge of China? As the trading floor of the East, Hong Kong has a history of lavish corporate entertaining. Only this month, Michelin awarded a galaxy of stars to Hong Kong restaurants, including a third for L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon. Alain Ducasse also picked up a second star for Spoon at the InterContinental hotel, now one of 13 two-star restaurants here, and 11 new one-star restaurants have been named in the latest Michelin guide.

In 2008, the government slashed wine-import duties to nothing, which has coincided with China's growing obsession with quality French wine; today, you can't move for magnums of Margaux. At the InterContinental, where I am staying, the glass wall of the hotel's wine bar is crammed with 4,300 bottles. The day I arrive is the opening of the annual Wine and Dine Festival, so I head down to West Kowloon Park. More than 200 suppliers have set up booths offering wine and mouthfuls of accompanying food: ham from Serrano and sizzling prawn satay sticks, but the focus is on the wine. It's essentially a trade fair, except anyone can come.

I move on to food and hit the restaurants and bars of Shelley Street, in the Central district, a steep hill with the world's longest escalator running up the middle. (They like superlatives here. Later that evening I have a cocktail at the highest hotel in the world, the Ritz-Carlton, which occupies the top 16 floors of the newly opened International Commerce Centre, the world's fourth-highest building. At least it is at the moment. Things change quickly here, as I said.)

But back to the escalator. It opened in 1993 and still hasn't been beaten, according to the Guinness World Records book. At 800 metres long, it was designed to encourage commuters between the Central and Mid parts of the city, so in the morning, it runs downhill, taking workers into the centre, then at 10.30am, it changes direction to go uphill until midnight. It's not just one long stair though: you can hop on and off regularly (there are 20 separate escalators in total, with a total vertical climb of 135 metres) and best of all, it's free.

For a gourmet, it offers a similar experience to those sushi restaurants with the conveyor belts, except you're the one on the move. On I climb, passing streets with distinctively English names: Elgin, Wellington, Stanley, Gage.

It's 14 years since Chris Patten officially handed Hong Kong back to the Chinese. I notice that the postboxes have been painted green and the Queen's head has dropped off the stamps. But English remains an official language and you get the occasional burst of empire nostalgia. Like on the corner of Staunton Street, where a massive London Underground sign reads "Yorkshire Pudding", telling you you've found the

"Best of British" café, where they serve full English breakfasts.

I trundle past, and get off a few doors up at Sakesan, the new sake bar and Robatayaki restaurant, where food is cooked on an open fire. Sake is Japanese, but you can get anything you want here. A tasting session of four sakes, paired to sweet and savoury dishes, reveals how varied rice wine can be.

Taster menus prove to be a theme: lunch that day has 10 courses. I'm back at the InterContinental, which has no fewer than five restaurants, including Spoon and a Nobu, which also has two Michelin stars. I plump for the Chinese option, Yan Toh Heen, and immediately regret having been greedy at the breakfast buffet.

The first dishes seem small enough: this is dim sum, which the Chinese eat throughout the day as a light snack. Trouble is, they keep coming. Scallop dumpling is followed by golden prawn and turnip in puff pastry, then a whole crab's shell stuffed with crabmeat. A roast duck appears with a flourish, and soon we're on to wagyu beef, a black cube of sweet flaky meat, which I'm told is the result of playing harps to the cows. It's rounded off with a delicate mango and sago soup.

So who can blame my taste buds if they weren't quite what they should have been by the time I went to wine tasting in the dark? They had been put through their paces: I had eaten 10 types of fish, 12 types of meat, seafood which had been alive 10 minutes before, and, on my last night in town, chickens' feet. I had made a pilgrimage to Tim Ho Wan, which, on the face of it looks like any cheap Chinese canteen, but is the world's cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant. In fact I went to a sister restaurant, just opened in Sham Shui Po, possibly the least touristy part of the city, because to go to the main branch, in the more happening Mong Kok district, you have to queue for three hours. Prices hover at HK$10 (80p) per course, and the most expensive dish is £3. But chickens' feet? Lightly battered and smothered in an orange sauce, they are slimy on first contact, gristly within. It was the last day, and the last meal, and there was nothing for it. Reader, I swallowed it.