There's not much that needs saying about a dish like this. The setting is a small shophouse improbably nestled in Hong Kong's Causeway Bay. It's crowded and bustling, but unlike larger Chinese restaurants, here people are eating alone or with just one other. Hot tea is poured. The soup bursts with all the goodness leached out of chicken bones over long, slow heat in a battered pot. Small, sexy drops of oil bob enticingly on its surface.

But the wontons are the stars. Silken on the tongue, resistant to the bite. Teeth pierce the outer skin, cracking it open to reveal prawns the colour of tigers in mist.