Written by Dyami Millarson

I used OpenRice to find restaurants in Hong Kong in 2017. Before coming to Hong Kong in February 2017, I had never heard of OpenRice. I learned about OpenRice while I was in Hong Kong and it made my life a whole lot easier once I knew about it. However, it took me a while to find out about OpenRice and realise how useful it was. When I did not yet know about OpenRice, I had to look for restaurants in the streets and hope that I could find what I was looking for and that was a lot harder. As soon as I had been for a few days in Hong Kong, I noticed that Hongkongers put pork in almost every dish in their local restaurants. Yet I have a dietary restriction of not eating pork because I react to it and it makes me extremely uncomfortable (I get allergic reactions from eating pork). Oftentimes I did not know that I had been exposed to some pork and soon I would find out by my severe reactions. This made it all the more crucial for me to find the right restaurants which would serve pork-free dishes that were safe for me to consume, and that is why OpenRice really helped to satisfy one of my basic needs in Hong Kong.

While in Hong Kong in 2017, I heavily relied on OpenRice on a day-to-day basis. It saved me from a lot of unpleasant experiences with pork, because it helped me to avoid the kind of restaurants that were unsuitable for me. OpenRice really helped me to navigate the landscape of Hong Kong’s restaurants. By using this site, I was exposed to the huge variety in food choice that Hong Kong had to offer and this truly delighted me. I really love food and one of my main reasons to be in Hong Kong in 2017 was for the food. I definitely wanted to try as many different foods as possible. Hong Kong was a food paradise for me and it offered me the opportunity of going on a culinary adventure that I had never experienced befoee. Being in Hong Kong was certainly a pleasure to the senses, because I could try everything that I had not tried before.

One of my favourite experiences was trying out fine-dining restaurants. I enjoyed dressing up for the occasion and almost every dish at those fine-dining restaurants was one of the most memorable experiences in my life. This was exactly how I wanted to experience food: as an experience that is not easy to forget. Hong Kong definitely taught me a lot about cuisine. Up to this very day, I cherish the culinary knowledge and experience that I gained in Hong Kong in 2017. Hong Kong had an eating-out culture that I was not used to. In the Netherlands, we seldom eat out and we prefer having our meals at home. I wanted to adapt to the local culture in Hong Kong and what I learned was that it was normal to eat out. Food at restaurants is much more affordable in Hong Kong than the Netherlands. Eating out so frequently as I had done in Hong Kong in 2017 presented me with new experiences, and it truly widened my culinary horizons. I consider cuisine to be one of the biggest reasons to visit Hong Kong and it is definitely one of the most important aspects of Hong Kong local culture as I had learned in 2017. OpenRice helped me not just to provide for one of my basic needs, but it offered me a totally new adventure that I loved while I was in Hong Kong. I tried using OpenRice for finding restaurants in mainland China as well while I went on a separate trip to mainland China in the summer of 2017 after I had gone back to the Netherlands for a while in 2017, but discovered OpenRice, which is mainly based in Hong Kong and adapted to the local culinary landscape of Hong Kong, was not as practical as using TripAdvisor for finding restaurants in mainland China.