It’s an unlikely spot for a Michelin star: Here on the gritty fringes of Mongkok, Hong Kong, where clusters of hobby shops display mock M-16 sniper rifles and remote-controlled helicopters. The smell of stinky tofu wafts up the street over the murmur of haggling vendors, still audible from the Ladies Market two blocks down.

Not the sort of neighbourhood where you’d expect luxuries. Yet behind its nondescript storefront, the doll-sized Tim Ho Wan restaurant offers these in abundance. Last November, it earned a coveted Michelin star for its dim sum in the second Hong Kong-Macau guide.

You can spot the restaurant easily by the queues. Since winning its star, Tim Ho Wan’s fame has rocketed, and lines form well before the doors open at 10am. Even by mid-afternoon (a slow hour, by my guess) the lines extended half a block in each direction.

The wait-time, say grumbling fans on dining website Openrice.com, is routinely two to three hours. There are no phone reservations, of course. Most are locals, coming back for their regular fix of plump har gow or melt-in-your-mouth turnip cake.

Once you’ve collected your ticket from the harried woman out front, nodding as she barks a time-estimate, you can either wait with the other fans or slip off to Sai Yeung Choi Street – Mongkok’s main shopping drag – to kill a few hours.

Continue reading . . .

RestaurantNews.com provides restaurant press release distribution.
For more information: http://www.RestaurantNews.com/press-release/



Subscribe to our RSS feed!