Two Stops for Wonton Noodles in Hong Kong

By some sheer coincidence, I reckon, two of Hong Kong’s best known wonton noodle shops are located across from each other on Wellington Street in Central. On one side, Mak’s Noodles; on the other, Tsim Chai Kee. It was late breakfast time one weekday, perhaps almost brunch, when we decided to try both of them. I hear both places fill up at lunchtime with all the financial workers in the area so it’s probably best to go either early or late.

We started at Mak’s. Two bowls of wonton noodle soup were ordered (about 25HKD each) – regular egg noodles for me and flat rice noodles for M. Lots has been said already about the size of the portions at Mak’s but even after reading about it all, it was still a bit gobsmacking to have a tiny bowl served to you. You know those Chinese soup bowls that are usually set at each place at a Chinese restaurant? Yeah, that size.

Four little wontons sat at the bottom of the bowl, under the little pile of noodles. The standard size for a wonton in Hong Kong seems to be of ping pong size but these were significantly smaller. Still, they were tasty with their prawn filling. The noodles were excellent with a great bouncy texture and the soup was very flavourful.

It was a great bowl but the size of the portion and the price of that portion is a bit hard to stomach. I reckon I could put away at least 3-4 bowls comfortably which definitely doesn’t make this a budget noodle shop. Of course, if this was in London, it would almost be a bargain for the quality evident in the bowl. They’re also famous for their dry noodles topped with shrimp roe but we didn’t have another chance to try those.

Mak’s Noodle
G/F, 77 Wellington Street
Central
Hong Kong

With lots of space still in our tummies, we crossed the road and entered straight into Tsim Chai Kee. The inside was surprisingly modern and all dark wood and a great contrast to the old-fashioned look of Mak’s. The menu is shorter than that of Mak’s with only 3 kinds of toppings available: wontons, sliced beef and fishballs. Prices were lower (about 20HKD for one topping and 23HKD for two toppings) and portions were bigger.

M chose the wonton noodle soup this time and yes, it was a generous portion. Again, excellent noodles but I thought there was more of a lye flavour in the soup which must have leached out from the noodles. Still, I would happily down a whole bowl of these noodles with their ping pong sized wontons.

I went for two toppings: wontons and fishballs. The bigger wontons made for a meatier mouthful though in hindsight, I quite like the daintiness of Mak’s wontons. The huge, bouncy, homemade fishballs were excellent – they were made of dace and studded with dried orange peel, not something I’d had in a fishball before. The noodles were just as good as in Mak’s.

Oh, I can’t pick a straight out winner. Both were great but for value for your buck (and it’s all about good value here), Tsim Chai Kee is better. When I go back one day, it’ll be all three toppings in a bowl for me (yeah, then I’ll cross the road and have a plateful of dry noodles with shrimp roe)!

Tsim Chai Kee Noodle
Shop B, G/F Jade Centre
98 Wellington Street
Central
Hong Kong

 

Eating in Mongkok

Just realised that almost a month has passed since I was in Hong Kong – it feels like yesterday! Anyway, happy Chinese new year! The year of the dragon started on Monday and sadly, I have had no time to celebrate due to work. I’m sure I’ll do something later.

It was just past Christmas-time when I was in Hong Kong and one of my colleagues who calls Hong Kong home was back visiting friends and family; we arranged to meet up in Mongkok one afternoon. There’s nothing like being shown around by locals and they understood what I meant by wanting to try things that were particularly from Hong Kong. And yes, they too are serious about eating. Mongkok was exactly what I expected of Hong Kong: crowded and brightly lit with signs and with snack stands at every corner!

After walking about the pet market for a bit (and cooing at the cute little puppies), we started with the proper eating with my first egg waffle (also known as an eggette).

Oh, how beautiful it was. I loved the contrasts in the waffle – the light and pillowy puffs connected by a thin crisp sheet. The flavour was excellent too and no extra sauce was necessary. It amused me no end to eat them by hand, snapping off pieces as you go.

We went off wandering down the Ladies’ Market but that egg waffle wasn’t enough to fortify us and we found ourselves flagging by the end of it. We were brought over to China Cafe, a little cha chaan teng, a particularly Hong Kong style of tea cafe, hidden from the street by a food market. Nothing seem to have been touched in the cafe since the 60s and had retained every bit of charm for it. Watch out though if you don’t read Chinese – they don’t seem to have an English menu.

Hot milk tea was very strong and benefited from lots of sugar.

A couple of pineapple buns (bolo bau) were ordered with thick slices of butter stuffed in the middle. Ah, now I know where I was going wrong with pineapple buns – I always found them quite dull. They’re just plain buns with their only redeeming feature being the sweet cookie crust; despite their name, there’s no actual pineapple in them. Well, it’s much better with butter!

And another first for me – Hong Kong style French toast. I think they deep fry the entire thing, which is the only way I can think of for the egg to turn such a beautifully even brown. M poured syrup over the entire thing and we all tucked in – yes, I do love this kind of French toast.

China Cafe
1077A Canton Road
Mong Kok
Hong Kong

We wandered back past the station to see the lights of Mongkok. The sky may have been dark but down on street level, it could have been confused for day! It was crowded (Mongkok has the highest population density in the world) and bright and fun.

After again walking around for a bit, K and M led us to a street lined with restaurants. K wanted to introduce me to Chiu Chow cuisine. Also known as Teochew cuisine, Chiu Chow cuisine is very popular in Hong Kong and while I recognise many of the dishes on that Wikipedia page due to their popularity in Malaysia too, I had never had a purely Chiu Chow meal nor did I know what was popular in Hong Kong. (Oh, Teochew porridge I do know – I wrote about it a couple of months ago.) I was quite excited to try it with those in the know.

K started us off with a peppery soup of pork intestines and pickled vegetables. While the intestines weren’t for me, I loved the strong flavour of white pepper in the porky broth.

A combination of barbecued sweet sausage and squid appeared on almost every table there. An egg braised in spiced soy too was also ordered. It’s quite plain but in a soothing way.

A plain grilled fish came out with a variety of sauces – soy, chilli, soy bean. Actually, I started losing track of all the sauce dishes around me. If it’s one thing that struck me about Chiu Chow cuisine, it was the use of so many condiments at the table.

The Chiu Chow oyster omelette was totally different to the sticky, starchy Malaysian variety that I knew. This deep fried eggy fritter had oysters scattered throughout and was delicious dipped in chilli sauce.

Some brilliant salt and chilli pork ribs and stir fried pea shoots with garlic rounded up our meal. Oh, and white rice too, gotta have that. We stuffed ourselves well.

Biu Kee Lok Yeun Chiu Chau Restaurant
G/F 33-37, Fa Yuen Street
Mongkok
Hong Kong

As always, there was still space in our dessert stomachs (though this time, we really were struggling) and K and M took us to Lucky Dessert nearby. We were there early in the night and so the place was half empty but they assured us that it gets much busier later as it’s quite popular with the younger crowd. I do like the fresh and fruity Hong Kong style desserts and the ones served here were quite modern in style.

Mango pancakes were thin crepes filled with cream and slices of fresh mango. This appears to be quite a popular dessert in Hong Kong and I have to admit, I’m still on the fence about this one. I think I prefer my mango without cream.

This was a whole banana and chocolate chips wrapped in filo pastry. Nice but my focus was really on the next dessert…

My favourite was this last one – durian in sticky rice rolls. Thin mochi-like skins were rolled around lots of fresh durian meat. I had no idea durian was so popular in Hong Kong!

Lucky Dessert
G/F, 25-27 Soy Street
Mong Kok
Hong Kong

As you can imagine, we had to roll ourselves back home that night. Thank you so much for showing us around, K and M!

 

Beef Noodles at Kau Kee, Hong Kong

Beef noodle soup. When more than one person recommended the ones at Kau Kee to me, it became a priority visit while in Hong Kong. As befits a 90+ year old restaurant with a speciality, their menu is short – beef brisket or beef slices or curry beef tendon on your choice of noodle soup. There may have been a vegetable too.

At about 8pm on a weekday, three of us found a table with relative ease though the small restaurant was constantly packed while we were there. A bowl of Kau Kee’s special beef brisket in traditional broth (88 HKD, all beef and no noodles), another of beef brisket with e-fu noodles in broth (32 HKD), and two curry beef tendon with rice vermicelli (30 HKD each) had us bursting at the seams.

The bowls weren’t large but they were filled to the brim – lots of noodles and beef and topped up with broth. The beef brisket was just tender and very flavourful and well, beefy, as was the broth. I enjoyed the e-fu noodles though perhaps their strong flavour would pair better with the curry.

The curry beef tendon was gorgeous. This beautiful bowl opened my eyes to excellent Chinese curries – I had only had terrible yellow curry powder and cornstarch monstrosities prior to this. This was delicious and rich and complex and full of both tendon and beef brisket. I’d never had such soft beef tendon as this before; they must have simmered the mixture for ages.

We did over order by that bowl of extra beef; a single bowl of beef and noodles each would have been enough and been even more of a budget dinner. Oh, what I’d give for a bowl of the curry right now!

Kau Kee
G/F, 21 Gough Street
Central
Hong Kong

 

Chowing Down on Cheung Chau

I was looking forward to a day out to one of Hong Kong’s smaller islands but I was to choose between Cheung Chau and Lamma Island. I went with the smaller island – Cheung Chau – mainly because it sounded like fun and heck, it’s home to the bun festival every year (not that we’d get to see it that day). It was a quick half hour ferry ride from Central and we emerged onto an island that was just as crowded as Hong Kong island but with a more relaxed, holiday feel to it.

Apparently, the thing to do on Cheung Chau is eat seafood. With empty stomachs, we wandered down the road and ended up at one place where the tables were packed and the food looked good. The New Baccarat Seafood Restaurant, it was!

What a lovely spread we had out there in the sun (yes, about 20C that winter day)! Scrambled egg with prawns was the first to our table and it was excellent, all fluffy egg and juicy, crunchy prawns.

Stir fried gai lan with garlic was crunchy and all the green we needed.

The salt and chilli squid was greaseless and crisp and made up for a hard and greasy version the previous day at Hay Hay Kitchen in Wan Chai.

Salty, carby goodness came in the form of chicken and salted fish fried rice.

Our steamed garlic scallops came with a wonderfully ridiculous amount of sweet garlic and unexpected but pleasantly slippery mung bean vermicelli. We scraped the contents of each shell straight into our mouths.

Finally, a whole steamed fish, a Cantonese classic. We picked it clean.

The seafood was all magnificently fresh though I doubt they’ve been caught very locally. I was told most of the waters surrounding Hong Kong had been fished clean though I did see a few fishing boats come in with a small catch and some fish and prawns being dried in the sun. Local or not local, with the warm sun on our backs, fresh breeze on our faces and cold drinks in our hands, this was a memorable lunch.

New Baccarat Seafood Restaurant
9A G/F Pak She Praya Road
Cheung Chau
Hong Kong

With full bellies, we strolled around Cheung Chau’s car-less streets and over to the beach on the other side too. And I knew Hong Kong was famous for its wide variety of street foods but the variety of snacks available on Cheung Chau was still amazing and surprising. Fish balls, deep fried mochi ice cream, sticky rice cakes, popcorn, waffles, egg waffles, ice cream, shaved ice, pastries, grilled squid … all that temptation was just too great.

We first stopped at the Grand Plaza Cake Shop (91B, Hoi Poi Road, Cheung Chau) where a large crowd was jostling for just-out-of-the-oven egg tarts of both the Hong Kong and Macanese varieties. We had one of each – the mini dan tat (the Hong Kong version) was particularly tasty.

We couldn’t pass up this Taiwanese shaved ice stand and I walked away with this aromatic guava one. The flavours are already frozen into the ice block and the shaved ice almost resembles freshy fallen snow in its consistency – all light and fluffy.

Finally, on the way back to the ferry port, my first tornado potato! It’s a single potato spiral cut on a stick and mine was fresh out of the fryer. A bank of shakers in front of the shop allowed you to custom flavour your fried potato however you wish – there was curry, extra hot, chicken and garlic powders all along mine. Salty, greasy, good.

Needless to say, go with empty stomachs to Cheung Chau. To get to the island, take a ferry from Central Pier 5 in Hong Kong. You can use an Octopus card to pay – did I mention my love for their Octopus card? I love that all transport around Hong Kong can be paid with it and many eating establishments also accept payment with it.

 

Australia Dairy Company, Hong Kong

Apart from a one day stopover when I was seven years old, this trip over the new year was my first time in Hong Kong. For the first time in a long time, this was a proper holiday with no work commitments; I was there to see one of my best friends who moved out there about two years ago. My trip was packed with catching up, seeing the sights and sampling as much of the local cuisine as possible. Thank you so much, M and S, for hosting me!

One of the first and best breakfasts I had (jetlag meant that I desperately needed a big meal in the morning) while there involved scrambled eggs. Scrambled eggs. I went all the way to Hong Kong to eat scrambled eggs!

Oh, but what luscious and silky scrambled eggs. They were from the famed Australia Dairy Company and when we visited one weekday, we found a queue going down the road. Not being in any rush, we joined the end of it and to our surprise, we found ourselves at the head of the queue (still going down the road) in about 10 minutes. It was soon apparent how they managed to turn over customers so quickly. Everyone was sat wherever possible, sharing tables if necessary. Your food arrived within 5 minutes of ordering and your bill was also ready when you finish for you to take up to pay at the counter next to the entrance. This was not a place to linger. We shared a table with two other friends having breakfast and while it was a bit cramped, it was never uncomfortable.

The short menu is either on Chinese on the table or brought in English separately. There are a few sets and then an a la carte menu that mostly consisted of the food in the sets served separately along with a few more bits and bobs – like I said, it’s short and they obviously specialise in dairy and eggs (it’s the “Dairy Company” after all though I have no idea if they have any relation to Australia). We both opted for a Breakfast Set (26 HKD): toast with butter, fried or scrambled eggs, macaroni with ham in chicken soup and coffee or milk tea. Scrambled with milk tea for both of us.

I think the macaroni soup is a good example of what they call soy sauce western food – there is obviously a western influence on this dish but nowhere in the west would you see a dish like this. This was certainly filling but not something for which I’d jump through hoops.

But those scrambled eggs! I’d jump through a dozen flaming hoops for that plate of softly set yellow. The buttered crustless toast on the side was thick and fluffy perfect with it. All this and a hot milk tea really set us up for the day.

We also tried one of their egg custards (20 HKD). There are yellow (egg) and white (egg white and milk) versions and we tried a yellow. It’s very smooth and soft set and while I’m not a big fan of milk in general, it very slowly started to grow on me. Well, it didn’t grow on me enough to actually like it – we didn’t even manage to finish half.

Definitely recommended and if you happen to pass it and are feeling a bit peckish, do get their scrambled eggs (also available in a sandwich). I’ve got to learn to make eggs like they do.

Australia Dairy Company
47 Parkes Street
Jordan
Hong Kong