Kowloon Soy Co. Ltd.

Stroll along Queen’s Road Central, in Hong Kong, a wide avenue of modern skyscrapers, hotels, restaurants, and malls, turn into Graham Street, and you may feel like you’ve time-traveled. The narrow, sloping street smells like drying fish, and is home to an open-air produce stall and a shopfront that’s changed little since the ’70s. The latter is the remaining commercial outlet of Kowloon Soy Co. Ltd.

The company was founded in 1917 by the grandfather of the current owner. After a brief pause during World War II, Kowloon Soy Co. Ltd. eventually came to span five shops across the territory (but oddly enough, never in Kowloon) that sold its soy sauces and other condiments and seasonings. Today, as supermarkets have taken over, the tiny outlet on Graham Street is the only one remaining.

Kowloon’s soy sauce was made in Hong Kong until the ’90s, when high costs and lack of labor made it necessary to move across the border to mainland China. Today, the brand’s highest quality soy sauce, which is only available in Hong Kong, is made the old-school way, via fermenting in clay jars for three months.

A bottle costs HK$126—around US$16—“Ten times as much as the soy sauce sold at a supermarket,” explains Kenneth Wong, the owner. It contains just two ingredients—salt and soybeans—and is as savory as it is salty, with a rich mouthfeel.