Part of the mighty East Ocean Group, 365’s specialty is crabs (as if the name wasn’t obvious enough). This solidly Chinese venue, with lazy susans on cloth-covered round tables and a flatscreen blaring at the back, also touts tanks of swimming undersea creatures at the entrance. There is a dizzying selection of menus: those with pictures, those without, those with Chinese only, those with courtesy English printed alongside. It’s hard to have a comprehensive idea of everything that’s offered, so we made a blind stab.
Loyal Dining is Tai Ping Koon’s latest rival—one that’s loud and proud and taking up prime real estate on busy Wellington Street. With retro wallpaper on the walls, dark woodsy tones and a slew of marble tables strewn across the floor, you kinda feel like you’ve gone back a couple of decades when you step into this colonial-era Hong Kong diner. The menu includes a mix of western-style dishes with Chinesey ingredients, such as seared foie gras with BBQ pork and rice, and soy sauce chicken wings.
Though it’s just a heartbeat away from The Pawn, chances are you’ve never heard of, let alone walked into this restaurant. Tucked away on tiny Thomson Road, Wah Lam is a local beef noodle joint that locals rave about and cabbies swear by. Its fluorescent lighting, plastic stools and servers donning stain covered smocks may not be the most inviting, but once inside you’ll be sold on some of the best beef brisket noodles in town. We ordered two piping hot bowlfuls of their soupy “hang laam” beef brisket with flat rice noodles.
We didn’t realize we had been tricked by all the Cantonese diners serving ketchupy Xiamen-style fried rice and noodles until we came to this humble shop and discovered the real deal. Xiamen Fengwei is owned by a true native, and their menu is a comprehensive list of snacks (many of them fried), soups, soup noodles and rice. None of the dishes are tangy or ketchupy, to say the least, save for some of the dipping sauces that are paired with the snacks.
W1 Restaurant, headed by executive chef and general manager David Bai Yongcuan, is exclusively dedicated to Ningbo cuisine from Zhejiang province on the eastern coast of China. The restaurant specializes in a variety of seafood dishes that are native to the turf, and savoriness is the main element in many of their signatures. When we walked in for dinner one night, we saw the faux gems on the booth seats, the mirrors on the ceiling and smiled. Yup, this is an authentic Chinese restaurant alright, one that is proud of its tawdry décor and the half-hearted translations on its menu.
A well-publicized collaboration between self-taught locavore chef Margaret Xu Yuan of Yin Yang Kitchen in Wan Chai and restaurant group IHM of Posto Pubblico fame, our expectations for Cantopop were sky-high. Though the food is solid and the décor is funky and fun, the sticking point for us is that the gimmick exceeds the quality of the food. Their shtick, in a nutshell, is healthy and organic cuisine meets cha chaan teng fare. They use locally sourced vegetables and eggs laid by coddled chickens in the New Territories that listen to music—yes, really.
It’s not easy to pithily summarize Yunnanese food. Located in the southern part of China and bordering Vietnam, Thailand and Laos, Yunnan is home to the highest number of ethnic minorities of any province. As a result, the food is diverse in style—and delicious. If you’re ready to explore this new cuisine—or try excellent renditions of old favorites—make a beeline for Yunnan Rainbow. Located around the corner from the Central Library in Causeway Bay, it’s a quiet spot amid a frenetic neighborhood.
Say Yik is one of those tin-roofed slap-togethers that are a cross between a dai pai dong and a cha chaan teng (the seating is DPD-style, but the menu is definitely CCT—think Lan Fong Yuen in LKF). We walked into this inconspicuous hole in the middle of Stanley market and wasted no time on the orders: a bowl of instant noodles with fried egg and Spam, a glass of iced lemon honey and a plate of their signature French toast with kaya spread. About ten minutes later (an eternity for an in-out place like this!), our noodles arrived in a handsome brown broth.
This popular vegetarian restaurant serves artfully presented vegetarian cuisine, which almost looks too good to eat at times. The two kinds of steamed vegetarian dumplings were sublime, and the starter, a platter of vegetarian cold cuts and a rice noodle salad with peanut sauce, was a perfect blend of sweet and savory. However, a few dishes weren’t quite there yet; the sweet and sour stir-fry of lily bulbs, cashews and assorted veggies was too cloyingly sweet and sticky.
This popular vegetarian restaurant serves artfully presented vegetarian cuisine, which almost looks too good to eat at times. The two kinds of steamed vegetarian dumplings were sublime, and the starter, a platter of vegetarian cold cuts and a rice noodle salad with peanut sauce, was a perfect blend of sweet and savory. However, a few dishes weren’t quite there yet; the sweet and sour stir-fry of lily bulbs, cashews and assorted veggies was too cloyingly sweet and sticky. As there is no specific menu, dishes are often made to your order and preference.
This restaurant by the Epicurian Group is absolutely too good to be true, revitalizing the sometimes worn-out Cantonese seafood genre. It’s brightly lit with modern Chinese restaurant opulence, but the cuisine is anything but generic. Instead, Yu Joy rescues long-lost seafood recipes and gives them a modern twist—epitomized in dishes such as the delectable chilled fish skin salad or a dish that actually consists of a fish that has been taken apart, cooked separately and then reassembled. The service is similarly above-par: the well-trained staff are attentive and sociable.
This restaurant by the Epicurian Group is absolutely too good to be true, revitalizing the sometimes worn-out Cantonese seafood genre. It’s brightly lit with modern Chinese restaurant opulence, but the cuisine is anything but generic. Instead, Yu Joy rescues long-lost seafood recipes and gives them a modern twist. The service is similarly above-par: the well-trained staff are attentive and sociable.
