Hong Kong is a place where you can eat some of the strangest food you can imagine.  I’m talking intestines, balut, various testicles and even straight up worms.  Here’s a good article on some of the more prevalent ones: coconuts.io.   I can promise I will eventually get to doing all of these but I can only rationally handle one at a time.  As I have already mentioned trying snake wine in my article on the The Monkey Lifestyle of Jigokudani Onsen Korakukan I felt it’s a good time to stick to theme and review my experience eating the snake soup.

This meal came at the suggestion of a friend of mine that has been living in Hong Kong for a few years.  He said he knew a nice little hole in the wall place just near the Causeway Bay station.

It may have been an indication that my friend didn’t want any but nevertheless I was here to do a job, and I won’t falter.

Now honestly the soup itself isn’t actually bad.  Snake is perfectly edible albeit very chewy.  Like eating anything that is essentially a pure muscle I suppose. Your jaw will get a workout.  The broth and I think chicken(maybe turtle) it came with was even better.  Overall it seems like a really good soup with a mediocre primary ingredient.  Without the snake it would have been a good thick appetizer type soup.

Overall, as far as novelty cuisines I’ve tried this was toward one of the better ones, just below goat’s head which I mention in Iceland all in my mouth and much better than the fermented shark also mentioned in that article.  The texture may be off putting to some people when you connect it to what your eating and it’s hard to ignore when they have these jars all over the place.

This specific spot I was not able to get an address but another good yelp recommendation in that area is here.  They also have an English menu which would have been nice. Plus, I don’t think snake soup is such a culinary dish that there is a huge variance of types in Hong Kong so you will likely get similar flavors anywhere.  Anyway, approach it with an open mind and beer and it slides right down!

Side note, apparently Steven Seagal also ate snake here, whether that’s good or bad is up to you.