We’re on a tight schedule. For my girlfriend, Elisabeth, and me, Hong Kong is two 10-hour layovers bookending an Asia trip, but we’re after more than that schedule should reasonably allow. Before hopping into the cab, we had parked our bags at the airport and taken an 80-mile-an-hour train ride into town. I had put the word out to friends and colleagues that we would need help to get the most out of our visit. While Anthony Bourdain might have a fleet of specialists to plan his visits for his television show “The Layover,” we had a guy named Nelf.

Nelf Lee, who co-owns Hong Kong’s Rabbithole Coffee & Roaster, and foodie Barbara Mai were both recommended by Vancouver chefs with Hong Kong connections, and they meet us at the Wan Chai district’s Bowrington Road Market. Here, vendor stalls spill out onto the street in loud splashes of color and noise, and Nelf, who’s wearing a shirt that reads “Sorry about what happens later” brings us straight up a side staircase, to the Bowrington Road Cooked Food Centre.

At the entrance, a lone woman sitting on a bucket presides over two pails of chicken feet. Beyond her, dozens of tables follow the contours of the space that’s ringed with kitchen stalls, and people fill every plastic stool in what is basically a food court. Coming into the city, I had wondered where all the people who live in the high rises were. The answer, it turns out, is at lunch. The Centre is a melting pot of construction workers, students, and businessmen, and Elisabeth and I are the only tourists.

Nelf (short for Nelvin) steers us to a table in front of Muslim Wai Kee (“They call it ‘Muslim’ but it just means ‘no pork,’ ” he says gleefully), and a whole roast duck and a beef curry with rice are served instantly. The duck’s been chopped into bite-size pieces, simple and deep flavored, while the curry is complex and charged with spicy heat.

We barely stand up before our seats are taken.

Back in a taxi, I notice the variety of restaurants that we whizz past: congee (porridge), Szechuan, bakeries something from almost every province of China. While Hong Kong’s got a bit of a sushi fetish and a rising interest in Western food, its greatest strength is the diversity of Chinese cuisine. They don’t mix and match; there’s no fusion between provinces. Instead, it’s the best of each.

Back in the Central District, we pile out of the cab on busy Wellington Street and head up a few flights of stairs, this time opening a door to a throng of people eating dim sum. The large but crowded room, where waiters push food carts among the tables, belongs to Lin Heung Tea House. Nelf flashes four fingers to a white-clad waiter who points to the ceiling. One flight up, we find another room, just as large and just as full, where we’re escorted to a table in the back corner.

Nelf chases down a cart while Barbara washes our teacups and chopsticks in a large bowl of tea, a cleaning custom that is as much about ritual as actual sanitation.

“This place is old school,” says Nelf, who’s returned with a couple of plates to get us going. “If you want a real dim sum environment, this is it.”

Four fried wontons look like flowers on a plate and we bite through their super-crisp exterior and find a plump, taut shrimp within. Next to them, sesame-dusted pastries hide tiny packets of barbecue pork inside, tastily mixing sweet and savory.

“We don’t necessarily proceed from savory to sweet,” Nelf says as our tea is refilled from a large bronze pot. “We’re fine with throwing some sweet into the middle of the meal.”

Back on the savory side, tofu skins wrapped around meltingly tender pork and firm shrimp become an instant favorite.