Gage Street Beginning at Cochrane, Gage is a lively short strip ending at Aberdeen Street. The first section between Cockrane and Peel is the beginning of the "market experience." One finds flowers, dry food, fruits (freshly squeezed juices at $10 a glass) and vegetable, meat butchers and fish shops with tanks of live seafood awaiting shoppers.

Throughout the day, domestic helpers acquire their selection but during lunch hours the markets sees a surge of office ladies doing their shopping. And many a joint caters to the office workers' feeding. One worth mentioning is Lan-Fong-Yuen, a classic street stall that has expanded to run an indoor dining room while still selling their famous "milk tea" ($11) to be enjoyed on wooden stools perched atop a narrow wooden bench... just the way it has been enjoyed for over 50 years in Hong Kong's Dai-Pai-Dongs.

If you are a coffee drinker and you want to try the local milk tea, you can try a unique drink called "Yuen-Yeung". Literally it means Mandarin ducks, but it is actually made by mixing coffee and milk tea. However, some like it a lot but some don't.

Click for map of the "Cochrane-Gage-Wellington" walking route.

Running up from Queen's Road Central to Gage, Graham is a strictly food market street. Really a narrow lane, it is lined with licensed food sellers on both sides. Some of them are common fruit & vegetable sellers while some are specialty vendors.

Near the Queen's Road end there is a lady selling every kind of Chinese pickled vegetable imaginable with other dried / preserved food like salt-dried fish. Across from her is a tofu specialist that carries at least 8 kinds of soy products. Sometimes one will find "guest" vendors from the local island / New Territories farms who bring in their freshly harvest crops in very small batches.

Click for a map.

Differing from Graham, Peel is an "assorted" market street, having shops of other natures than just food, while it is just as old. Worth noting is a "serge machine workshop" in the middle: It has (very old but working) serge machines where home sewers without one can bring their projects in to sew, or leaving them to be finished by the shop, using the machines. While the shop also does common alterations and repairs, the serge machine rental is one of the last such shops in Hong Kong. One also finds houseware shops and little antiques / collectible shops dotting Peel, selling anything from "oil paper umbrellas and fans" to bamboo steamers to old Hong Kong photos to freshly made noodles. Following Peel all the way up to the top will lead to the SoHo area, with a left turn on Hollywood onto Elgin and then a left turn onto Staunton.