Hong Kong Egg Tart (蛋撻): The Guangzhou Pastry Chris Patten Called His Favourite and Tai Cheong Bakery Has Baked Since 1954

In 1997, the last British governor of Hong Kong — Chris Patten, nicknamed by locals as 肥彭 (Fat Pang) — made one very public, very final decision as he was packing up Government House: he kept turning up for egg tarts. Not state banquets. Not formal farewells. He kept stopping, in his motorcade, at a small bakery on Lyndhurst Terrace in Central called 泰昌餅家 (Tai Cheong Bakery), buying boxes of 蛋撻 (daan6 taat1), and eating them off the paper. The Hong Kong press noticed. The nickname 肥彭蛋撻 — "Fat Pang's Egg Tart" — stuck to the shop for years afterwards. A Cantonese pastry that may have started life in a 1920s Guangzhou bakery had, somehow, become a British governor's farewell food.

The Guangzhou Origin Story Nobody Fully Agrees On

The egg tart almost certainly traces back to the English custard tart. Canton (modern Guangzhou) was for centuries one of the only Chinese ports fully open to Western trade, and Cantonese chefs — famously, perhaps the most adaptive cooks in the Chinese world — borrowed, substituted, and re-engineered European pastries into something that fit a local palate. English custard was stiff and buttery. Cantonese chefs replaced the butter with lard and the cream with evaporated milk, lightened the sugar, and dropped the whole thing into a flaky Cantonese-style crust. By the 1920s, high-end Guangzhou restaurants were competing with each other to offer the most delicate 蛋撻 as part of weekend yum cha. The tart that would eventually become a Hong Kong icon was still, at that stage, a mainland Cantonese luxury.

The tart's journey across the border mirrored almost every other great Cantonese dish — it rode south with migrants, chefs and dim sum sum fu (茶樓師父) looking for better rent in a British colony. For the broader story of how Guangzhou food reached Hong Kong, see our earlier wonton noodle history piece. Egg tarts took the same route, roughly the same decade.

1954: Tai Cheong Bakery and the Cookie-Crust Revolution

For a long time Hong Kong egg tarts were made the way Guangzhou made them — in a lard-rich flaky puff pastry (酥皮) that cracked into dozens of thin layers when you bit into it. Then in 1954, a small bakery called Tai Cheong (泰昌餅家) opened on Lyndhurst Terrace in Central and quietly changed the rules. Its founder decided to swap the lard puff pastry for a buttery shortbread cookie crust (曲奇皮). The result was richer, denser, more biscuit-like — a bite that collapsed into crumbly butter and smooth yellow custard rather than shattering into pastry flakes.

Hong Kong took sides immediately — and has not stopped arguing in 72 years. The two camps are both correct, which is why both are still here. On one side: 酥皮 (shortcrust-puff) tarts, which are what you'll find at most cha chaan tengs. On the other: 曲奇皮 (butter-cookie crust), associated with Tai Cheong. The custard is roughly the same for both — eggs, evaporated milk, sugar, hot water — baked just long enough to set, not long enough to brown. Hong Kongers can tell within one bite which camp a bakery belongs to.

That slow-weekend, "let's catch up over tea and tarts" culture is why we made the 得閒飲茶 Let's Catch Up sweatshirt. The invitation itself is one of the most Cantonese things a person can say.

The Macanese Cousin and the KFC Takeover

The other egg tart you'll see across Asia is a Macanese tart — a crisp filo-style puff pastry with a torched, caramelised black-spotted top. That style is not Cantonese in origin. It was invented in 1989 by Andrew Stow, a British pharmacist who opened Lord Stow's Bakery in Coloane Village, Macau, after being inspired by the Portuguese pastel de nata. The two tarts are, in his widow Margaret Wong's words, "close cousins." In 1999 Margaret sold the Macanese tart recipe to KFC, which immediately rolled it out across its Asian stores. That is why, in 2026, a convenience-store Macanese tart is often what people outside Hong Kong think a Chinese egg tart tastes like. Hong Kongers know better.

The Everyday Ritual: Egg Tart With a Yuenyeung

By the 1960s, after the Second World War had broken Hong Kong's old pre-war class structure and the cha chaan teng had become the city's democratic restaurant, the egg tart made the final step down from banquet item to everyday snack. For about HK$5 you could buy a hot tart off a bakery tray, wrapped in a square of waxed paper, and eat it standing on the sidewalk. Pair it with a yuenyeung (coffee-tea) or a naai cha (milk tea) and that was afternoon tea for a factory worker, a schoolkid, a secretary. The tart's democratic reach — rich, poor, mainlander, local, tourist — is exactly what turned it into Hong Kong's unofficial pastry.

The Chris Patten Boost (and Why It Really Mattered)

Chris Patten took office as Hong Kong's 28th and last British governor in 1992 and spent his five-year posting earning the Cantonese nickname 肥彭. He became a very public Tai Cheong Bakery customer, so much so that the Hong Kong press began showing up at the shop whenever he did. The bakery's association with Patten gave Tai Cheong a global press shelf and sent its tarts into tourist guidebooks from Lonely Planet to the Michelin Guide. Patten later said in interviews that of all the food in Hong Kong, Tai Cheong's egg tart was his number-one favourite.

In 2005 Tai Cheong temporarily closed under rent pressure on Lyndhurst Terrace, and loyal Hong Kong customers reportedly mobilised to help it reopen. The shop is still there in 2026, still on the same street. Still charging the same quietly dignified HK$10-and-change for a hot 蛋撻 in a paper sleeve. If you walk past at the right morning hour, you can smell the butter three doors down.

If you want to wear your yum cha pride in a slightly different way, our 食飯 Dinner is Ready oversized tee is for the person who treats mealtime like a love language — which is the only correct Cantonese position on egg tart timing.

Why 蛋撻 Still Matters To the Diaspora

For every Hong Konger abroad — in Vancouver, Toronto, San Francisco, London — the first thing they look for in a new city is a bakery that gets the custard right. Not Portuguese. Not Macanese. Hong Kong. Glossy, yellow, not-too-sweet. A buttery crust that gives under the thumb. A warm tart in the hand that tastes exactly like a schoolday 3pm in Kowloon. The 蛋撻 is a tiny portable Hong Kong — one bite, one memory, one afternoon of 1980s cha chaan teng chatter. That is why, when you are two decades and ten thousand miles away from Lyndhurst Terrace, you will still queue twenty minutes outside a Chinatown bakery for one.

And if your yum cha deserves a hoodie, the 得閒飲茶 Let's Catch Up hoodie is the one. Wear it to the bakery queue — someone will smile.