Lunchtime can look likes a lot of things in Hong Kong, but it doesn’t often look like healthy convenience. We’re masters of adding complicated steps to what should be a straightforward process. We do it in banking with EPS and cheques, in transport with confused Uber drivers and one way streets, and we especially do it with our healthy food choices, with limp mesculin horrors and butter-slathered vegetal sides. Finding a good salad in this city can be like trying to spot someone at a Bottelón who isn’t French, but the recent glamourising of vegetables and their products by restaurants across town has been tremendously exciting. Even more exciting are the subsequent lunch time salads (and even better, they’re deliver/Deliveroo-able).
Feast on the below, lovers of the leaves, and tell us you’re not enamoured:
1) BEP
Salad of the Moment: Goi Bo
BEP, like Kim and Kanye, will be forever. The char-grilled beef salad with chopped cucumber, red onion, tomato, herbs, lemongrass, crushed peanut & lime dressing is an affair that’ll likely last a lifetime.
Order from Central here.
2) Mana! Fast Slow Food
Salad of the Moment: Customized Salad Box
Full autonomy is granted at Mana!, though a visit is not really complete without a good slab of halloumi. Unless you’re vegan; in which case please carry on. The kale is always popular (shock and awe), but the beans are what you should come for. Crispy and slathered in a creamy-but-dairy-free dressing, they (the beans) might make you forget the halloumi. But probably not.
Order from Central here.
3) Nood Food
Salad of the Moment: Organic Kale, Carrot, Cashews and Jicama with Sesame Dressing
Jicama has taken a while to appear anywhere outside wet markets and Mexico for a while, but now it’s really getting about town. It’s best consumed in the organic kale (hello again), carrot, cashews and jicama salad with sesame dressing in the salad menu set C. Good for an antioxidants and vitamin C hit.
Order from Central here.
4) HABITU
Salad of the Moment: Botanical Salad In A Jar
#wewantplates but #wealsowantconvenience so sometimes you need to settle for a jar. Garden salads at Habitu are a hipsters dream, combining a non-conventional vessel with vegetables cultivated from organic farms. We can see the man buns approaching. Oh, and there’s also a kale chicken caesar. Because KALE.
Order from Centralhere.
5) Home Eat to Live
Salad of the Moment: Lemur Leap Frog
No frogs, but lots of butter lettuce, pickled onion, avocado, croutons, almond parmesan, veggie bacon and finished with a creamy cashew dressing. Vegans can get really get down with this salad, and look, no kale!
Order from Central here.