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Fishmongers wearing hats take a break at the Aberdeen fish market in Hong Kong.

I am stumbling in the dark, tentatively poking the floor in front of me with a white stick and clutching a shot glass of what smells like cinnamon.

The woman I had been clinging to as we entered the pitch-black room has abandoned me having shouted “you have to sniff out your table” over her shoulder as she departed into the gloom. Sniff out my table? This could be a long night.

Then I realise that the instructions have been lost in translation somewhat – a case of Chinese whispers in the dark, passed along a line of confused people. The game, it transpires, is to listen for a voice shouting the name of whatever you can smell in your shot glass and head towards that voice.

I hear “spice” being called out somewhere in the distance and try to head slowly in that direction, tapping the white stick out in front of me with each step.

I eventually stumble across my kindly (and very patient) waiter for the night, Julian, who instructs me to take a seat at the table beside him and await my fellow guests who are entering the room one by one and having a shot glass thrust into their hands.

This is wine-tasting in the dark, an initially terrifying but rather fascinating experience in which you spend an hour-and-a-half in complete darkness smelling and tasting wines served by visually-impaired waiters – the theory being that your sense of smell and taste is heightened by your lack of vision (although most of the people at our table mistake the first two white wines for red, not a good start).

This is not a new concept, of course, but Dialogue in the Dark is tapping into a new trend in Hong Kong: the boom in wine.

The city has positioned itself as the wine hub of Asia; wine imports have continued to grow since the government introduced zero wine duties in 2008 and the following year saw the launch of the first Hong Kong Wine and Dine Festival. The third event took place at the end of October and marked the beginning of a month of culinary indulgence in the form of Hong Kong Wine and Dine month.

On the opening night, wine enthusiasts were being bused in from all across the city. Visitors are given tokens which they can exchange for wine and food at any of the 300 booths around the open-air site on West Kowloon Waterfront Promenade.

The festival is closely followed by the Lan Kwai Fong Carnival – featuring 80 food and beer stalls, Brazilian dancers andAfrican drummers – and the World of Food and Music at Stanley.

It seems there is no end of opportunities to treat your tastebuds in this vibrant, fast-paced city; it offers visitors a choice of more than 11 000 restaurants. The restaurant scene is as frenetic as the city itself, but it boasts an impressive number of Michelin stars from the stylish L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon at the Landmark and Lung King Heen at the Four Seasons Hotel to the famous roasted Chinese goose at Yung Kee and foodies’ favourite Tim’s Kitchen.

And fine dining isn’t just the reserve of the rich in Hong Kong: the city is also home to the cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant in the world, Tim Ho Wan in Kowloon. This unassuming dim sum canteen in the Mong Kok district is owned by Mak Pui Gor. The most expensive dish costs around R37 and prawn dumplings and crispy pork buns cost R10. Not surprisingly, you’ll have to join a long queue – the waiting time is said to be about three hours.

Lacking the stamina to spend a large part of the evening with my face pressed against the window watching other diners eat perfectly steamed dim sum, I opt to visit its sister restaurant, which recently opened in Sham Shui Po.

In comparison to its famous sibling, the new restaurant appears to have received a rather lukewarm reception: although it is full there is no queue. What is familiar is the menu, which features delicate steamed shrimp dumplings, vermicelli rolls stuffed with pig’s liver, slices of pan-fried turnip cake and those famous crispy buns filled with barbecued pork.

For those in search of local flavour, a visit to the wet market is a must. The food is a riot of colour and includes juicy, ripe persimmon, shocking-pink dragon fruit and vast, rotund pomelo.

Then there is the seafood, most of which is alive or in the process of being dispatched. Boxes of crabs bound up with grasses are lined up alongside lobsters, abalone, sea whelks and tanks of geoduck, a type of clam that looks like a giant, bloated snail that has outgrown its shell.

Nearby, an eel writhes around in a bright orange bowl, cut in half by the butcher’s knife and trailing a stream of blood, while decapitated fish heads appear to gasp their last breath in a shallow tray.

At one stall a woman grabs a handful of frogs from a tank, stacks them one on top of the other, ties them together with twine and throws them into a tray, where they flail their legs futilely awaiting their inevitable fate.

Most of these creatures will find themselves on the menu at Kwok’s restaurant at the InterContinental, which is also home to the Michelin-starred Spoon by Alain Ducasse and Nobu.

At night, myriad iridescent lights and neon signs illuminate the skyscrapers on Hong Kong Island opposite and at 8pm the Symphony of Lights adds to the spectacle with a series of lasers that dance across the waterfront skyline.

A new addition to the skyline is the five-star Ritz Carlton Hotel, which occupies the top 17 floors of the city’s International Commerce Centre and is the highest hotel in the world.

Teetering on the 118th floor is Ozone, a super-swanky bar whose lofty vantage point leaves me feeling a little light-headed. Even the toilet has a great view. And the hotel has added to the city’s restaurant tally with upmarket Italian and Cantonese restaurants on the 102nd floor below, creating yet another remarkable venue for the culinary adventurers to surmount. – Daily Mail

* For more information visit www.DiscoverHongKong.com

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