West Villa Restaurant    西苑酒家  

West Villa is certainly my favorite place for weekend yum cha. I don't just love the food, I also like it's forever bustling atmosphere. Also if you like to bump into the rich and famous, West Villa is definitely the place to be. I can pick out movie stars, singers, TV stars and famous politicians 9 out of 10 times I dine in this restaurant. This time a famous celebrity sat right next to my table.

Back to the food! The variety of dim sums that you can order in this place is amazing and they also constantly bring out new dishes. Rather than the usual Prawn Dumplings and their famous BBQ Pork, I ordered the mix chinese sausage buns. The bun absorbed all the taste of the sausage and it is so delicious. Another dish that I would like to recommend is the rice with beef and tomatoes. You probably thought I was crazy ordering "HK Cafe Style" dish in a proper Chinese Restaurant. I can assure you that this is the best rice dish with beef and tomatoes you would have ordered! The rice was lightly fried with eggs. The beef was tendered and full of flavor. The reason why I like this dish so much I think was the source. The source was full of tomatoes and also button mushroom bits. Simply delicious!

Still my favorite restaurant!

after a loooong walking for a site visit, it's nice to pick this place for brunch.

The overall environment is good. Not too noisy...

The service is nice, quite friendly...

place is clean, foods are fresh...

wholehearted choice

Came here for dimsum.

Food: Dimsum was just only average in terms of taste. Things that stood out (above average) were the shrimp dishes. The Har Gow (steamed shrimp dumplings with asparagus) were exceptional, very fresh with big giant shrimp each (I personally dislike when they have minced shrimp instead inside) and sprinkled with asparagus. The shrimp rice rolls were also very fresh with the dough skin a on the "flour-y" and thicker side than some other places which are much thinner and smoother. Also generously stuffed with giant whole shrimp with sweet soy sauce on the side. Also, I want to give them kudos for their good Liu Sha Bao (the steamed white buns with drippy egg yolk), had the perfect sweetness and consistency of "drippyness." Other dishes I tried that were average quality include the Chicken feet (very dull gray brown in color so didn't look as appealing nor did it have peanuts/taro on the bottom which disappointed me), Siu Mai (average), and Char Siu (Is pretty good with leaner meat compared to Fu Sing's version. I personally prefer Fu Sing's - more melt in your mouth flavor).

Service: Good responsive service. Enough waiters for the tables. Food came out in good time.

Decor: Located in Lee Garden mall - bit low ceilings but good natural lighting as one entire side of the restaurant has full glass window view of the shopping street below. Overall decor is better than Fu Sing's as it is less tacky more simple classic white designs.

Sizing it up: On value, I ended paying HKD355 for the dimsum which were in total 6 dishes with one being a Char Siu dish. This is on the expensive end, even compared to Fu Sing, which I normally pay this much for maybe 1 or 2 more dishes. Dimsum is definitely better at Fu Sing's. However, service and the wait time for food to arrive is better here at West Villa. Just dimsum speaking, I would not come again since its only average and overpriced for the quality - I would rather eat at a cheaper average dimsum place or eat at Fu Sing for high quality dimsum.

Fake Menu + Bad Attitude = at West Villa, Causeway Bay
So disappointed, beside not to go there anymore. I knew nothing else I could do to calm myself from anger.
Not wealthy like others who can give $100 as tips, isn't it mean we cannot get fair and quality service in Year 2009 in Hong Kong?
Fake Menu = at 7:20pm, they already sold out of BBQ Pork, Fried Chicken, Salted Chicken & Roasted Goose, I wonder if they prepared it at all. Maybe they only prefer customers to have Seafood or SharkFin menu.
Bad Attitude = Big boss who was sitting at the table next to main entrance, his face and attitude told me clearly that was "MY FAULT" to order their hottest sold out items at 7:20pm.
There are many same class restaurants in the area of Causeway Bay or Wanchai, if you are not one of the Wealthy, please dont spend a dime at West Villa, they are not happy to earn your money.

8 of us went there for dinner last night and it was an exceptional meal.

Overall quality wise it was one of the best Chinese meals I have had in many years.

We ordered many dishes including their famous char siu pork, soup, stewed garoupa tail, soya sauce chicken, roast duck, pak choi in fish soup and almond bun.

Everyone who went to the dinner either ate in silent to savour the food or was commenting on how good the food was when they took their first bite.

Services was attentive and portions were big enough. We all came up very full and satified!

After reading the good comments here, I visited 2 weeks ago. It was packed being a public holiday. The tables were quite close together and it was noisy. The food was OK, but I wouldn't rate it as highly as others have done so here. The main problem for me is everything was so salty, and contained lots of MSG (felt really thirsty afterwards). It was quite oily too.

This is the first time I tried this restaurant, but it will probably my last time too. The food are ok, not really that special but not too bad either. the problem is in their service and attitude! somehow our ordering list is mixed up with other table's, so they kept delivering food we never ordered. I explained to the waitor politely when this happened for the 1 time, that waitor (a short and fat young man) took away the food, and rushed back with the wrong ordering list(not submitted by us). his attitude is so rude that he said he insisted the food was ordered by us and he's got the proof. I then told him that we just sat down 2 min ago and showed him the ordering list which we were still filling in!!! he left with bad attitudes, without expressing any signs of apologies!!! 1 min later, another wrong dish was delivered again and 2 min later the 3rd one... I got so angry cause this problem is intolerable, so I explained our situation to a manager and he helped us stop the rest wrong delivery. He then simply walked away. NO ONE has ever showed us any form of apologies!!!

what makes me even mad is that while the waiter said words like "thank you" to other customer when they left, we walked away with no one saying anything when we left!!! It seems that it is our fault and became unwelcome customer.

I will blacklist this restaurant cause I always that the service is among the most important part in evaluating a restaurant.