As Hong Kong’s Wine & Dine Festival returns to the Central Harbourfront from October 29 for four days, one corner of the event will offer a particularly concentrated taste of the city.
Marking its 70th anniversary this year, Maxim’s Group is bringing together 10 of its brands at Maxim’s Boulevard, a food street built around the theme “Global Flavors, Interpreted in Hong Kong.” The line-up moves easily between nostalgic Cantonese bites, Hong Kong-style fast food and Southeast Asian flavors, alongside Italian pastries, American comfort food and upcycled creations.
Emmy Kan Wai-ming, Maxim’s Group’s chief operating officer for Hong Kong and Macau, said the idea was to create a food street that visitors could wander through, eating as they went and discovering different flavors along the way.
The setting takes cues from Hong Kong streets, with neon signage and colorful hanging decorations giving the boulevard a lively local character, particularly after dark.
There is history behind the name too. The original Maxim’s Boulevard opened at Ocean Terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui in 1966, becoming known for its harbor views and then-modern dining style. Six decades later, the name returns by Victoria Harbour, this time as a temporary culinary walk through the group’s past and present.
The showcase is loosely organized around four ideas: street eats, creative reinterpretations, local ingredients and Hong Kong classics. That means familiar flavors such as black sesame rolls, pineapple buns with butter, soy sauce chicken drumsticks and iced red bean drinks sit alongside dishes using Tai O shrimp paste, fermented bean curd and salted egg yolk.
Among the more playful festival-only bites from Maxim’s Cakes are Mini Cheese Shrimp Pineapple Bun Burgers and Mini Peach Shrimp Pineapple Bun Burgers. Both turn the familiar pineapple bun into a savory handheld snack, pairing its lightly sweet bread with springy shrimp filling and either double cheese or peach sauce.
For something with a stronger local accent, the Shrimp Paste Lobster & Mango Pastry Skewer combines Tai O shrimp paste with sweet lobster and fresh mango, wrapped in flaky pastry and finished with fish roe. Kan recommends pairing it with a crisp white wine, whose acidity can lift the sweetness of the lobster and mango while balancing the salty umami of the shrimp paste.
Maxim’s MX, meanwhile, leans into classic Hong Kong comfort food. Its festival-exclusive Rose Liquor Soy Sauce Chicken Drumstick is marinated with rose liquor and slow-braised in soy sauce, while Huadiao Imitation Shark Fin Soup adds fragrant Chinese wine to the familiar street-side bowl. Bite-sized barbecue pork belly and iced red bean drinks round out the nostalgic offering.
Those after a more traditional taste can turn to Maxim’s Palace, where dim sum favorites are served in easy-to-share festival portions.
There are sesame shrimp toasts, garlic shrimp spring rolls and pan-fried turnip pudding with XO sauce, but the sweeter side of the menu is particularly evocative. Black sesame rolls and steamed red bean puddings recall old-school tea houses, while the festival-exclusive orange juice roll revives a once-familiar Cantonese dessert with its translucent, gently chewy texture and fresh citrus aroma.
Jade Garden adds its own dim sum signatures, including shrimp and fish roe shaomai and three lava buns: golden custard, Lipu taro and black sesame.
The boulevard travels further afield through brands including THAI BASIL, CaN LaH, COVA and Shake Shack.
For a simple food-and-drink pairing, Emmy points to Shake Shack’s High Heat Dog or Bacon Cheese Dog with ShackMeister Beer — an easygoing combination suited to the festival setting.
A more distinctly Hong Kong sustainability story comes from BOB, or Bottle of Bread. Its locally brewed pale ale replaces part of the malt with surplus bread and bread crusts collected from Maxim’s production facilities. Each bottle uses about 25 grams of upcycled bread, producing citrus, biscuit, honey and toasted malt notes.
Kan suggests trying the beer with Hong Kong siu mai or shredded chicken dressed with BOB Chilli Oil. The oil itself is made with toasted surplus bread crumbs, chicken oil and spices, allowing the pairing to tell the upcycling story through both the food and drink.
For Maxim’s, the food street is less about presenting one definition of Hong Kong cuisine than showing how comfortably the city moves between influences. A pineapple bun can become a shrimp burger; local shrimp paste can meet lobster and mango; leftover bread can become craft beer.
Against the lights of Victoria Harbour, that mix of memory, reinvention and cross-cultural appetite may be the most Hong Kong flavor of all.
marco.lam@singtaonewscorp.com
