Lan Fong Yuen (蘭芳園) Historic Store Renovation and Memory of Time Spent with My Dad

His wife and son were standing across the street watching, while old Mr. Lam was coming back and forth to the store front to oversee the change.  The scene was such an attraction to people passing by coz the restaurant is so famous there is a saying "if you haven't eaten there, you haven't tasted the real Hong Kong style tea restaurant".  It is also the birth place of Hong Kong style super smooth milk tea nick named "pantyhose milk tea" (絲襪奶茶) and a hot drink mixing 70% pantyhose milk tea and 30% coffee called Ying Yong (鴛鴦).  These 2 inventions alone have touched tens of millions of people's life already, this place should be in Hong Kong's permanent cultural archive!  I heard that to create a cup of today's pantyhose milk tea, Mr. Lam still insist to use tea tree sprouts collected right after rainy seasons in Sri Lanka's Colombo and Malaysian non-dairy creamer.  There are dozens of other creative dishes the store created, before you go please ask our fellow HKers and we'll be able to recommend some popular ones that will worth your whole trip.

Every time I pass by the store, I'd recall a faint memory of my father (who is unfortunately being diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease this week at age 80) bringing me to one of these stores at very young age to eat fish ball noodle.  We would sit on small chairs on top of a wooden platform no bigger than 40cm depth (as seen above the red cola boxes in the above picture) raised from street floor and had our "snack".  Today these became sweet memories of mine while his is fading fast due to the disease.  I love my dad, he gave our family his best, beautiful calligraphy which he no longer can do, .... let's do it dad, I'll bring you over there after their renovation finished.

("Lan Fong Yeun Old Store" photo credit: WiNG)