While I didn’t manage to secure any chicken livers during my visit to the Whampoa Garden wet-market, I did manage to snap some cool pics.

The images are a wee bit blurry because the stallholders weren’t too keen on me and my camera.

The blokes in the poultry-section were especially nervous because, after the last bird-flu outbreak, the Hong Kong government imposed some strict regulations governing the sale of live poultry.

Here are some of the images:

Part 2 of the epic search for chicken livers happened today… and it didn’t end on a successful note.

I headed out to the wet-market nearest to my apartment in Hung Hom… in nearby Whampoa Garden.

I spoke to the staff in the reception of my building, who assured me that Hongkongers do eat chicken livers, but that I will only be able to find it in a wet market.

They were kind enough to translate “chicken livers” so that I could only “point and click” when I got to the market:

Finding the area where chickens and chicken products are sold proved a little difficult.

Before the outbreak of bird-flu a year or so ago, this part of a wet-market was a buzzing, free-for-all area.

However, since then (and after strict laws and regulations curbing the sale of fresh chickens) the poultry-section of the Whampoa Garden wet-market consists of only one stall and about 2 smaller ones selling different chicken portions.

And no chicken livers.

I did manage to capture the sequence of events leading up to the sale of a (plucked, dead) bird:

I’ll be dead in a few seconds…

Goodbye everyone…

Exposing the neck…

The end is naai nigh (Cape Flats chicken!)

One snip and it’s all over…

Overs…

Bleeding time…

After the plucking, it’s ready to be chopped… (notice the slit throat)

Bladerunner… chop, chop!

Hong Kongers eat a LOT of chicken. Period.

Any visit to a local wet market and you’re confronted with a plethora of stalls selling chickens. Live chickens.

Chickens are kept live on the premises and slaughtered almost in front of you.  You pick’em… they kill’em.

Just like that.

The thing that has always puzzled me though (and this is the Nando’s fan speaking) is:

…what the hell do they do with the chicken livers?

They don’t sell them frozen and in white punnets like they do back home. Nor do they even sell them there and then where the culling takes place.

I’ve only once bought chicken livers in Hong Kong. We once got slightly lost in the madness that is Mongkok and, by chance, happened upon a shop that sold chicken livers from a small road-side fridge. Never again have I seen chicken livers sold in Hong Kong.

Where has all the chicken livers gone?

Here’s my mission this weekend:

Find chicken livers in Kowloon.

Check back here to see how I’m doing.

Cheers.

Aaaahhh! Extra Spicy Chicken Livers as only Nando’s make them!