Explore the world of Canto-Western cuisine

updated 2:52 p.m. ET Jan. 8, 2007

HONG KONG - In a nod to steak house tradition, sirloins served at Hong Kong's Goldfinch Restaurant are accompanied by a sauce and a side. But don't go looking for American-style sauce and the ubiquitous baked potato with sour cream.

This is the wonderfully weird world of Canto-Western cuisine. The meat arrives on a sizzling iron plate, smothered with a soy sauce and garlic gravy that bubbles furiously. The side? Fried rice with egg and peas.

It may sound odd to Western palates, but at this Hong Kong restaurant, it's the only right way to eat steak.

For decades, waiters have served up dishes best described as Western fare with Chinese flair: borscht spiked with soy sauce, wok-fried spaghetti with meat sauce, and a watery cream of corn soup with strips of pink ham floating in it.

Canto-Western cuisine grew out of the numerous steak houses and other Western-style restaurants that opened during the '60s and '70s in Hong Kong, a former British colony.

At the time, the food - which acquired the nickname "see yauh sai chan," or "soy sauce Western" - was a novelty. For locals, the restaurants were a more affordable and relaxed experience than authentic Western eateries, which catered mostly to expatriates.

"You could call this Hong Kong's earliest fusion food," said Lau Kin-wai, a food columnist at the Hong Kong Economic Journal.

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"Chinese people were trying to handle what they saw as exotic food at the time. They were applying their own flavors and culture to the Western dishes they were exposed to," he said.

But as Hong Kongers have developed more sophisticated tastes, once classy venues such as Goldfinch - at one time the only option for a taste of steak or pasta - have become quaint relics.

"In the past, this was one of the very few upmarket Western restaurants around. It wasn't so easy to come in here," says Wong Kin-wing, a longtime Goldfinch manager. "Only people with some money could afford to, and they only came for special occasions like Christmas."

But today, high-end Western foods are widely available, he says. And that leaves the few remaining soy sauce Western restaurants trying to capitalize on their nostalgic appeal. And it seems to be working.

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