Bring your appetite with you, and prepare to feast.

There's an incredible range of restaurants in HK, serving everything from bird's nest soup to Big Macs. The local cuisine is, of course, Cantonese with a few specifically Hong Kong twists such as the pre-eminence of dim sum (the expression literally means "touch the heart") restaurants.

"Yum Cha" means to eat dim sum and drink tea and is normally done in the mornings and afternoons, while larger meals are served in the evenings. Dim sum should be eaten in a group, as each person will share their own dish with everyone else, thus ensuring a wide variety of snacks.

Apart from Cantonese cooking, all the other Chinese regional styles are well represented, and although you may not know it, are quite different in their character. A brief introduction will help to indicate the range:

Cantonese - Cantonese food is the traditionally "French Cuisine" of Chinese cooking - or so the Cantonese would have you believe. Flavours are often quite subtle, and the whole meal carefully crafted so that each course complements the next. The ingredients will always be ultra-fresh, almost fanatically so, and incredibly varied. The old saying runs that anything that "shows its back to heaven" is fair game for the Cantonese menu - though of course the majority of the meat dishes will be fairly straightforward fowl, pork, or especially in HK, seafood.

Pekinese -The food of the Beijing tradition is more likely to live up to the perceived stereotypes of Chinese cuisine, with Imperial-style restaurants clad in reds and golds, and ostentatious, even athletic, displays of noodle-making during the evening. The classic dish of this style is of course Peking Duck, which shouldn't be passed up. Other dishes will include Beggar's Chicken (cooked encased in clay and ash) and bird's nest soup.

Shanghainese - It's not hard to find Shanghainese restaurants in HK - there are plenty. The dishes will usually be more oily and rich, and can be very varied as Shanghai was historically a melting-pot for various Asian influences. Look out for "hairy crabs" in season, cold spiced beef, and a higher frequency of dumplings and noodles as opposed to rice.

Szechuan & Hunan - Szechuan and Hunan cooking is the hottest - chilli-wise - of the Chinese styles, with some similarities to Thai food. Typical flavours include ginger, garlic and coriander, while other ingredients run to bamboo shoots and bean curd (tofu). Seafood is uncommon, not surprisingly, as Szechuan is some distance from the sea.

Vegetarians, rejoice. The influence of Buddhism in China has meant that every regional style has its own vegetarian dishes. Consequently there are quite a few restaurants that serve only vegetarian food and all restaurants offer vegetarian alternatives. You should take care with the Dim Sum however, some "vegetable" varieties have been known to contain small amounts of meat.

And then, of course, there's the rest of the world. HK is a markedly cosmopolitan city when it comes to cuisine. There are strong Western influences, and it's never hard to find an Italian trattoria, British pub or American grill, to name just a few options.