Tai Ping Koon Restaurant

The legend goes that, in 1930s Hong Kong, a foreign customer at Tai Ping Koon Restaurant couldn’t remember the name of a menu item and asked for “sweet wings,” which a waiter misheard as “Swiss wings.” It’s likely apocryphal, but the name and the dish—chicken wings in a sweet/salty/savory glaze—became one, and Swiss wings are now a Hong Kong classic, found at restaurants across the territory.

At Tai Ping Koon, the place where the dish was invented, the wings are seasoned with bay leaf, rock sugar, Chinese wine, and two types of soy sauce. They’re sticky and tender and have an almost perfect balance of sweet and savory flavors. Diners eat them with a knife and fork.

In an oblique way, Swiss wings can be traced back to mainland China. Tai Ping Koon got its start in Guangdong in 1860, where it was one of China’s earliest restaurants to serve Western-style dishes. The restaurant moved to Hong Kong in 1938, and is still owned by the fifth generation of the same family, making it not only one of the oldest family-owned restaurants in Hong Kong, but quite possibly one of the world’s oldest continually-operating Chinese restaurants.

Other foreign dishes at Tai Ping Koon include steak and roast pigeon—both part of the menu for more than 130 years—as well as several menu items described as “Portuguese style,” no doubt an influence from neighboring Macau, which was a colony of Portugal for nearly 500 years.

Today, there are four branches of Tai Ping Koon in Hong Kong, the Causeway Branch of which has been at the same location since 1971. The interior boasts a funky wall mural and handsome wood furnishings. The waiters are dressed formally.