Since I was 6 years old, my siblings and I would spend at least 2 weeks (usually a month) in Hong Kong every year during winter. We stayed with relatives who lived in Wan Chai.

My siblings and I went through the same ritual every morning of our stay there, at least until we were in our teens (and became lazier. Adulthood has since put a stop to our joint HK visits). We'd go to the cha chaan teng on the Lockhart Rd for breakfast before traipsing through the smelly but colourful street market to reach our "pot of gold" (beancurd tofu, unbelievably silky and exceptionally good when cold. I have yet to find a rival to that store but that's another story..) that we know is waiting for us at the end of that "rainbow".

It was at that cha chaan teng that we first learnt about, well, cha chaan tengs. We loved their ham/luncheon meat with macaroni soup, pineapple buns and egg tarts with the flaky crust. These were the things we craved for and missed the most when we were away from HK. These were also the first foods we'd cram into our mouths when we returned. In short, they became our comfort food when in HK and Tan Dou (as Honolulu Coffee Shop is known in Cantonese), our common source of happy memories.

Several years ago, Tan Dou moved from Lockhart Rd to its current location on Hennessy Rd. Besides looking brighter and newer, it was still the old Tan Dou that I knew, with the same good old comfort food I loved. Other than being incredibly famous for its super flaky egg tarts, I recently found out that it is claimed on Wikipedia (in Chinese) that the cafe opened in 1940 at its Lockhart Rd location and was one of the first (if not the first) cha chaan teng in HK. I do not at all know if that is true but to me, there is only one place in the world where I'd want to have breakfast with my siblings and that is, Tan Dou.