And yet, tucked away on a sleepy pavement, unknown to virtually everyone, is one of the territory's few privately run museums - and possibly its quirkiest. The buzzer at the entrance isn't working and the small, gray two-story building may look like a wet market, but two off-color banners forlornly announce that this is a shrine devoted to the Foods of Mankind, no less.

For the past three years the Foods of Mankind Museum has quietly educated 53,000 students and sundry others about the history of ``the culinary experience.''

Lack of funds, however, means that the establishment will be closing its doors forever this summer. Unlike the vast majority of local museums, which are funded and run by the government, this one was founded and managed by three friends and receives no outside investment.

There's no pretension of grandeur or professional design here: The 1,000 or so exhibits, collected from all over the world by the owners and some 10 like-minded friends, are for the most part displayed casually. The only full-time staff, Susan Szeto, is manager, marketing officer and museum guide all at once. The exhibits are accompanied by brief notes in Chinese, some grayed and smudged. And no, they don't serve truffle or foie gras samples here, although one is welcome to enjoy curry fish balls for HK$5.

I come aquiver with anticipation of quirky and even kitschy displays, and I am not disappointed. Visitors may be dismayed or delighted to know there's a Styrofoam replica of the world's largest pumpkin (the real one weighed 513 kilograms); a tiny room displays what looks like a papier-mache model of an Indian and a hut in illustration of the origins of grilling and barbecue; an Egyptian section is decked out with statues and several random bronze pots; and a giant meter-tall pepper grinder which, says museum owner and teacher Man Cheung, is the largest of its kind and apparently pried from the hands of a reluctant Parisian shopkeeper for about HK$4,780.

Whole sections are devoted to coffee and tea, grains, salts and sugars; shelves are lined with 100 kinds of pasta, more jars of pickles and 200 kinds of herbs and spices.

There's a squash-holder from Africa, knives from Vietnam, long-armed soup ladles from Tibet, vessels carved as snakes, chimpanzees and deities, as well as all manner of sieves, pots, pails, bowls and barrels made of stone, wood, bamboo, ceramic, metal.

Then there are the low-tech mechanical exhibits - primitive and rusty food processors - that must seem weird and wonderful to Hong Kong's microwave junkies: ceramic stoves and cookers, cheese makers, 20th-century coffee distillers and grinders, kebab machines, wine bottle corkers, corn processors. As Man says, everything on display is a delightful toy, and visitors are most welcome to pick them up and play with them.

The museum may have the air of a curio or junk shop, but it's interesting in its own eccentric, charming way. Set within the 10,000-square foot space, it may appear somewhat sparse, but that's forgivable considering the owners' limited resources. Each unfamiliar exhibit, brought under this roof from distant places and times, conjures up exotic sights and smells. More importantly, each offers a little window into the owners' travels and lend essential humanness to a museum which, after all, concerns itself with a universal human need.

Why a food museum? ``We love traveling and we've collected lots of junk and many weird things ... toys, books, small utensils. We tried to group them, then decided to focus on the food theme because lots of interesting things we collected are agricultural tools from poorer countries.

``There are stories behind every exhibit, stories about how, when, where and from whom they were bought,'' Szeto says. ``It's heart-breaking to close down, and very hard to auction it all off.''

Man and his friends, who searched all over Hong Kong for a year for their ``dream house,'' formerly a small factory, have run into debts with the landlord - rent is a steep HK$40,000 a month.

Man laments that Hong Kong is far from receptive to the idea of private museums. ``We've been to lots of places and visited lots of small museums. They're everywhere in the United States, Japan and Taiwan, for example, but Hong Kong people seem to be stuck with the misconception that museums must be huge, like the Louvre,'' Man says.

He believes Hong Kong could ``have a lot of fun'' if the community works with the government on a Bruce Lee museum, a Cantonese opera museum, or a TV museum.

``Hong Kong culture won't have much of a future if we don't embrace and develop smaller local museums, even as we're planning to build a so-called world-class cultural district in West Kowloon. Culture can't just go in one direction, and smaller local projects can be strong focuses of the Hong Kong spirit and its collective memories,'' he says.

``It's just too bad we are now more eager than ever in wiping away what we have.''