"Click…click…click…click". I recognised the sound without the need to glance up from scrolling my phone. The person sitting across the aisle from me on the MTR was clipping their fingernails. It is a strangely common occurrence in Hong Kong to hear people employing the services of a small portable nail clipper in public spaces. I have heard it so much, I now don't even look up to register my temporary disapproval. In many ways it is just one of the standard sights and sounds of the city. Just like the "g…g…g…g…g…g…g…g…g" of the workman's jackhammer, as labourers endlessly remove concrete from neighbouring apartments, or the strange extended roar of double decker buses, bellowing out heat as they woosh inches past pedestrians on busy roads. Every city has its noises, but those in Hong Kong are wonderfully specific, at times annoying, and always at pains to remind you exactly where you are in the world.
You are never fully at peace here. Which is hardly surprising for a city of seven million people, most of whom spend their time living arse to elbow with everyone else in one of the most densely populated places in the world. You do, however, get used to the rhythm of it. It is strangely comforting to nod off to sleep with the faint sound of trams rolling down metal tracks in the distance.
Occasionally, to escape the incessant din, I will take the public ferry to Lamma on a Friday night to eat local seafood and drink cheap white wine in what feels like a little Thai holiday village. Sometimes I'll hike up to Lion's Rock at night, to marvel at the strange, perplexing and fascinating expanse of building, humanity and artificial light that extends out before you once you reach the top. Or perhaps I'll go to stand on top of the ferry terminal in Wanchai after work to watch the sun disappear and the boats in the harbour continue their odd looking ballroom dance around one another.
Craving what you can't have come naturally to humans. It seems like we are are pre-programmed to always look for more. For different. We know that finding true peace and quiet in this magnificent city is an impossible wish. We know that trying to replicate the rhythms and atmosphere of an evening in a gorgeous Israeli restaurant in Tel-Aviv is futile in Hong Kong, but we try anyway.
Which is what brought me and my dining companion to Francis in Wanchai, which is, in its own words, a "neigbourhood restaurant with a strong focus towards the ingredients and flavours of the Middle East", but to everyone else is the "semi posh Israeli place up the hill near Star Street". I'd been for lunch a lot, but never for dinner, probably because the no reservations policy extended even into the evening hours. In fact, arriving at 7.15pm on a Saturday night and being told the next table available was at 9.30pm, meant it nearly never happened at all. Thankfully it did happen, due to some accommodating friends, who joined us for a drink elsewhere to bide the time, and a heavy rainstorm, which initially soaked us all through, but eventually led to a lot of cancellations ahead of us and which meant we could eat at a much more respectable time.
Having downed a couple of large drinks pre-dinner, we probably weren't in the best shape to be making totally objective judgements, but it was, for the most part, pretty spectacular. The mezze-style starters included fried halloumi in pomegranate molasses, pickled vegetables, a rich and earthy hummus, a delightfully crispy falafel and enough soft, inviting bread to kill a celiac at 100 paces. The mains, lamb kofte, courgette salad and oven roasted cauliflower were equally delicious, particularly as (like the starters) they were all slathered in those delicious sauces like tahini that seem to lift ordinary things into the realm of deliciousness. I was too full and drunk to properly enjoy the desert, but it was one of those crispy pastry and cream cheese type things with pistachios, which was perfectly acceptable, but a bit much in the circumstances.
Needless to say, it didn't quite transport us all the way back to Tel-Aviv, where we sat on the tables in the street and enjoyed one of the best meals of our lives against the warm evening glow, but if you shut your eyes, and filtered out the woosh of the buses marauding down Queen's Road East, it got pretty close.