Cha chaan teng
The cha chaan teng (lit. tea restaurant) is a kind of fast-food restaurant commonly found in Hong Kong. Many people regard the cha chaan teng as a characteristic Hong Kong product: it provides something of everything (both Chinese and Western (modified) food); it offers efficient, though not perfect, services.
The "tea" referred to in the name of cha chaan teng is not the traditional Chinese tea, as in the case of cha lao (茶樓 lit. tea tower, the traditional Chinese restaurants). The "tea" may refer to the inexpensive red tea in brown plastic cups provided to the customers, as soon as they are seated, by the restaurants (many customers use the tea to wash their eating tool, instead of drinking it). Or it may refer to those tea drinks, such as the Hong Kong-styled milk tea and lemon tea, which are very popular in cha chaan tengs.
Food
The cha chaan teng serves a wide range of food, from steak to wonton noodle to curry to sandwiches. A big cha chaan teng often consists of three cooking places: a "water bar" which makes drinks, toasts/sandwiches and instant noodle, a "noodle stall" which prepares Chiuchow-style noodle (including wonton noodle), and a kitchen for producing rice plates and other more expensive dishes.
Table manner
Customers usually select their seats freely in a cha chaan teng, but in a crowded restaurant they have to share table with strangers. During peak hours, waiters in a cha chan teng do help seat their customers, "packing" as many eaters in the restaurant as possible. This practice of sharing table is called "dap toi" in Cantonese. For example, they will make two groups of three customers seated at a six-seat table, to avoid having a pair of customers sitting with a group of three people and one seat left vacant. Sometimes already-seated customers have to move to aid the "packing".
In most cha-chan-tengs, customers shout their order to a waiter, who will write down the prices of the ordered food (sometimes also the names of the food in local short forms; for instance, lemon tea is recorded as "0T") on a piece of card/paper provided to every group of customers. After their meal, customers will present the card/paper to and pay at the cashier.
Set meals
A feature of cha-chan-teng is that there are a lot of set meals. In the morning there are various breakfast sets, during lunch lunch sets, in the afternoon tea sets, and in the evening dinner sets. Each lunch or dinner set usually includes a soup and a drink (usually an additional HK$2 is charged for cold drinks, which some people regard as an unfair practice).
Other sets include "nutritious set" (which usually includes a bottle of milk), "light set", "constant set" (which is provided all day long, thus "constant"), "fast set" and "special set". However, these sets are often similar in their contents - which a McDull movie once made fun of.
In popular culture
An important part of Hong Kong culture, the cha chaan teng has been the scene of many local movies and TV dramas, such as the popular sitcom Virtues of Harmony (《皆大歡喜》). The TVB-made soap opera tells the story of a family who runs a cha chaan teng, usually boasting the egg tart and "silk-sock milk tea" produced by them. Stephen Chow also played a cha chaan teng waiter in the 1998-comedy Lucky Guy (《行運一條龍》).
Variations
Other kinds of local restaurant related to cha chaan tengs in Hong Kong include the chaan sud (餐室 lit. meal chamber) and the bing sud (冰室 lit. ice chamber), which provide a smaller variety of food than the cha chaan teng does. For example, a bowl of wonton noodle can be tasted in neitehr chaan suds nor bing suds. Moreover, genuine bing suds sell different types of ice kachang, sandwich and instant noodle but no rice plates. Original chaan suds and bing suds, which can be regarded as the prototype of cha chaan tengs, are scarce in Hong Kong today. Vorlage:HK-stub