Musings on Michelin stars, Tim Ho Wan 添好運 and more

In response to the criticism to the much-maligned 2009 Michelin Guide to Hong Kong & Macau, the 2010 guide, which came out last Thursday, featured two new entrants to the 1-star category who serve traditional Chinese cuisine to the hoi polloi. The additions were definitely well received by the local media and probably the owners / chefs of the two restaurants. But it may not be good news for the loyal customers, the queues are only going to get longer. One of the new entrants is Tim Ho Wan 添好運 which we have mentioned a few times in our blog.

Hong Kong restaurant offers Michelin-starred food for 78p

Michelin dishes available for 1 USD in Hong Kong

The other new 1-star entrant is Hung's Delicacies 阿鴻小吃 in North Point. Mum and dad never heard about Hung's Delicacies before even though it's closer to home. But then again, just can't imagine mum raving about such delicacies as duck's tongue 鴨舌 and chicken feet's tendon 雞腳筋. Perhaps this is for dad to go and try alone some day, once the Michelin's effect wears off a little, ie the Michelin induced queue becomes shorter.

A little of the Michelin's fame has also dusted on us. Our blog hit meter has shown a much higher hit rate since Friday. Initially, we thought there were a new bunch of people interested in our well being. The meter keeps registering higher numbers. We were perplexed until we found out that if you Google search Tim Ho Wan, our blog tops the list!!

Tim Ho Wan and Hung's Delicacies are not the only niche local restaurants featured in the 2010 guide. Tim's Kitchen 桃花源 has been elevated from 1-star to 2-star. And mum's ex-colleagues will tell you, mum used to organize take-away from Tim's Kitchen a few years ago. Those were the days!

And of course, another restaurant that's been elevated in its star status, is Fook Lam Moon 福臨門 in Wan Chai.

Bo Innovation, which mum doesn't particularly like, has been demoted to 1-star. Perhaps mum will write up on her take on the 2010 Michelin Hong Kong & Macau guide similar to this banter in Chowhound.chow.com. One day, when the guide becomes more established here, you might even see a chart similar to this for the New York guide from us. Enjoy eating, enjoy life!!


View Tim Ho Wan 添好運 in a larger map

How much do you pay for your dim sum? 福臨門

Unlike going to a French restaurant, where you order a main course or the set menu for say HK$300 or 500, the headline price tag will tell you whether the restaurant is expensive, dim sum lunch is a mishmash of dishes and you only know when the final bill arrive.

Just so you get an easy comparison between the 2 extremes in prices, have a look at the 2 menus here, one from Tim Ho Wan 添好運 and the other from Fook Lam Moon 福臨門. Both are mum and dad's favorites. For the steeper prices you pay in Fook Lam Moon, eg shrimp dumplings are HK$16 for four in Tim Ho Wan but HK$55 in Fook Lam Moon, you get a more spacious surroundings, one of the best services in Hong Kong and the chance to rub shoulders with the rich and famous.

If you come to Hong Kong, you can't go far wrong in going to either places for dim sum. You can only queue up for the cheaper place, while reserving a table for lunch at Fook Lam Moon can be tricky at times especially during the weekends.

Tim Ho Wan 添好運 II --> Sweet Pak Fu 糖百府

The restaurant scene in Hong Kong goes through a multitude of fads every year. Sometimes it will be a whole genre of cuisine where you see a different shop in every corner no matter where you go. Their growth will mirror that of bacterial growth almost to the letter (reference to the wikipedia article is highly recommended.) We have borrowed a graph from the article shown on the right here:
Growth is shown as L = log(numbers) where numbers is the number of colony forming units, versus T (time.)

The most recent example is perhaps burger joints which have names ranging from Fat to Monster and Shakem' Buns, which is num and dad's favourite. Of course you never know if we are in phase B - exponential growth or C - stationary until the whole gig is over.

Another type of fads will be a shop drawing crowds to queue up for hours just to eat for perhaps 20 mins. These shops often burn out within a short space of time because

• Hong Kong is a small place. Potential queuers, who have a taste for new things, do not need to travel far.
• Almost all restaurants in Hong Kong have only one objective, maximum return within the shortest time. Quality suffers and it is often inversely proportional to the time in existence.

The latter is probably a good enough reason to go and try out Tim Ho Wan 添好運 again. The queue of people waiting were there, so the novelty value remained. So the question is, "Can its dim sum hold up in quality?" Mum and dad went with grandpa last Saturday and waited for 80 mins to find out.

While waiting for their turn, they spotted a new shop next door to Tim Ho Wan called Sweet Pak Fu 糖百府. Instead of waiting in the heat, they decided to sit down in the air conditioned shop and try its desserts in the mean time. The two "Snow Ice 雪花冰" desserts arrived, one green tea flavour and one almond flavour. And they were delicious. The texture was very smooth and fine, almost ice-cream like. Both toppings tasted great but the almond topping was more fragrant. Well worth the HK$35 they charge per item. Apparently, "Snow Ice" was first developed in Taiwan some 30 years ago and currently one of the top favourites there. And it's fast becoming a new fad in Hong Kong apparently.

Back to Tim Ho Wan, the taste was up to standard but there's definitely a marginal decline in the presentation standard. Lets hope the quality can be maintained.

Tim Ho Wan 添好運

It has been a while since the last entry we did on our friend Cameron due to a lack of inspirations. The weather certainly doesn't help. Every time we take a walk we end up coming back drenched like a chicken to the slaughter (落湯雞 is a Chinese colloquial saying for drenched or soaked through, which literally means chicken fallen into hot soup. It has its roots in the Ming dynasty, 1368-1644. The closest English idiom is perhaps drowned rat.) After starting out as the driest May for the last 40 years when you could feel the autumn breeze walking at night, it has all gone horribly wrong for us.

Back to the topic of our entry, this is a restaurant that mum read about in the online version of Time Out magazine a few weeks ago. So a rainy Sunday morning sounded like the perfect time to go and try the place out. It turned out the rain helped in the queuing time.

Traffic was light. The journey from Hong Kong island to Wylie Road turning into Waterloo Road was exactly as directed by Google map but then it went all horribly wrong, "No Right Turn" into Dundas Street. Aiyah!! For a free service, it's not bad. Mum and dad finally found the right route in by asking around and parked into a multi-storey carpark in Dundas Street (update - Hang Lung carpark HK$7 per 15mins, not too bad space-wise; there was a Ferrari parked there. It turned out that there's another multi-storey carpark right opposite the restaurant in Paradise Square 百利達廣場.) It was a short walk to the restaurant in Kwong Wa Street and people were already queuing up despite the rain. Mum and dad got ticket number 24 when number 2 was just being seated. There were 20 tables. You can imagine the rest. But the rain seemed to have cut the queue by more than half and they were seated in about 20 minutes. 17 to 22 all went "MIA".

The claim to fame of Tim Ho Wan is it's opened by the former dim sum chef of the only Michelin 3 star restaurant in Hong Kong, Lun King Heen in the Four Seasons Hotel. Whether Lun King Heen is worth all its stars is another issue. But it was definitely worth the wait in the rain. Go there before the quality goes downhill as in the case of most small restaurants in Hong Kong after they opened.

Must try :-
Chicken glutinous rice wrapped in lotus leaf 古法糯米雞 HK$18- the rice is soft and the ingredients are juicy with the faint fragrance of lotus leaf.
Char Siu in crispy bun 脆皮叉燒包 HK$12 - very tasty and crispy top.
Chinese Sponge Cake 馬拉糕 HK$10 - delicious and don't worry about the side effects of eating them.
Fried Turnip Cake 臘味蘿蔔糕 HK$10 - can taste the shredded radish and it was well fried with a crispy skin. A lot of places you get more dough than shredded radish.