Chinabites

Posted: Mar. 09, 2009

One of the challenges of making a restaurant directory site is that prices do not stay stable and are therefore not terribly useful even one or two years after they are published. After spending about two months in Hong Kong I can at least offer what I think is a helpful relative price guide to restaurants here. The very cheapest meal you can get in Hong Kong circa 2009 at a sit down restaurant costs between HKD 20 and 40. These restaurants belong to a class of restaurant called "cha canting" or "da pai dong". At such places HKD 20-40 will generally get you a complimentary glass of hot tea, a small bowl of broth, and a plate of noodles with a little bit of greenery, meat, and oyster sauce.

This is a very typical example of a noodle-plate meal that I had for dinner tonight at Xin Ying Kee in Causeway Bay. My complaint about these is the general blandness. I'm sure the restaurant owner was casting me dirty looks for the barbaric amount of beet red vinegar I was dumping on his golden noodles.

After the "cha canting" and the "da pai dong" style restaurants, the next step up are a class of local chain restaurants that rely on a combination of branding, foreign appeal, and slightly nicer environments to charge about twice as much for only slightly better food in roughly equal quantities.

Today I stopped in at one such establishment, Spaghetti House on Mattheson St. just past Times Square. I've walked by it almost every single day I've been in Hong Kong, but have been in the mood to "go local" more than "eat spaghetti". It also seems to me that spaghetti is the kind of food that I've personally only seen children or John Phillips order in the United States. Nevertheless, Spaghetti House seemed to be doing enough business during lunch hour, so I stopped in to check it out.

The lunch sets at Spaghetti House were just about twice as expensive as noodles at a "cha canting", but to their credit did come with your choice of tea or coffee, a piece of french bread, soup, and a main noodle course. I had coffee, cream of chicken soup, and vegetarian lasagna.

Everything was just "OK" which isn't quite enough to get me back into the restaurant, considering there are so many other great places in Hong Kong to try. If you're in the neighborhood and looking for noodles, I still haven't found any place better than Red Ant which serves cheaper and more local food in a more pleasant environment.