Tin Heung Lau    天香樓  

Is it a tradition that great Chinese food have to be hidden off the side streets?

-Place
This is a step back into the old era of Chinese dining. The staff are vintage, but then that serves well a prelude to the dishes which seem to have gone better with age.

-Restrooms
Dirty bathrooms reminiscent of restaurants in the 80s is but the sole nuisance to this restaurant.

-Food
Freshly fried frog legs, crab role noodles, tea leaf shrimps, were all too above par. My limited Chinese culinary lexicon would be outdone by my experience here. I do know that it take much more skills to be able to bring to life the more traditional dishes.

It must be one of the few places which still take their kitchen craft seriously, in earnest, to respect the title of gourmet. Things are made fresh, not the logistically-tuned modern Chinese food "fresh" where things are made much ahead of time and you can order anything you want because it sits in the fridge. Many signature dishes must be pre-ordered. I am definitely coming back!

-Wine
I suggest ordering Chinese wine warm. One of the special thing about this restaurant is that they have experienced sommliers to craft the wine for consumption. This is uncommon for Chinese restaurants. Being that Chinese wine of old age come in various viscosity and taste, the sommliers must mix them according to the climate and age of different barrels of wine. Thus, it was much different than the wine you would get off the shelf. I never really liked Chinese wine however old and expensive they get, but this, was vastly different. It is hard to explain, as I guess if you compare this with Reds it would be apples and oranges, but wine is enjoyment nonetheless. Let me illustrate this - We drank this, and then went off to the Sky lounge for more wine, and lets just say those in my company were all yearning for the Chinese counter part instead! and we were having Ch. Margeaux!

Once again on Thanksgiving Day, I have chosen to have chicken instead of turkey. This year the venue is Tien Heung Lau (天香樓), my favorite Hangzhou restaurant. What a dinner this turned out to be!
A few of us arrived early, and started with a small plate of country paté (肴肉) and vegetarian goose (素鵝). This was pretty standard and did its job of toning down our hunger... Of course, those who arrived late never saw any traces of this plate...
We decided to skip a few "classic" dishes which didn't measure up to our standards on previous visits. The freshwater shrimps stir-fried with Longjing tea leaves (龍井蝦仁) got passed over for not being fragrant enough. The Dong Po Pork (東坡肉) was also nothing special.
As usual we started with some selection of cold appetizers, which was a combination of malantou (馬蘭頭, chopped Indian aster and tofu), soy-marinated duck (醬鴨), and another portion of vegetarian goose. The malantou is as good as it's ever been, while the duck was less salty than a previous visit.
Sadly the deep-fried freshwater eel (爆鱔背) wasn't available today, but we made up for it with the deep-fried frog legs (炸田雞腿). This was really nicely done, very light and one can really taste the true flavor of the flesh. Our resident Froggie thought this was much better than the grenouille that she is used to having...
Twice-cooked pork is something we ordered for the first time, as I seem to remember reading about it on the internet...but unfortunately I didn't care for it. The pork just wasn't fat enough for me...
One of the highlights of a meal here is the smoked yellow croaker (煙薰黃魚), and it never fails to elicit praises from the crowd. The smoky fragrance stays with you for as long as there's skin left on the plate...and the soft, supple flesh is just amazing. I would say that this dish gives the traditional Cantonese steamed fish a good run for the money as the best way to do fish.
There were 7 of us tonight, enough to share another traditional highlight - the beggar's chicken (叫化雞/富貴雞) - which had to be pre-ordered. This being our Thanksgiving dinner, of course the chicken has become all-important. And it certainly disappoint. Why anyone would choose to have roast turkey instead of this chicken is beyond me... (OK, so there are certain traditions that people keep to...) The minute that the chicken is taken out of the pot and unwrapped, the fragrance hits you and there is no doubt as to why the restaurant is so named ("heavenly fragrance"). The waiter finishes opening the chicken and reveals the mushroom stuffing inside - kinda similar to the turkey, innit? - all the while steam keep rising from the plate. Soft and moist meat seemingly from a banquet in the heavens is yours for the taking.

Lest we forget, this is hairy crab (大閘蟹) season and we are in a Hangzhou restaurant. As some of us are not crab lovers, we pass up steamed hairy crab and opt for the classic stir-fried hairy crab roe with noodles (蟹粉撈麵) instead. There isn't anything more that I can say about this dish which hasn't already been said. I quickly wolf down my bowl of noodles and secretly rejoice when one of us chooses not to have the crab roe...
Two veggie dishes complete this great meal, although we would have preferred the veggie with salted pork (鹹肉塌窩菜), unavailable as 塌窩菜 is not yet in season. Stir-fried winter bamboo shoots with pea shoots (冬筍炒豆苗) is great as both are in season. Beet root leaves stir-fried with wine (炒菜头) is interesting as the texture reminds me of sweet potato leaves. This is stir-fried with Chinese rose wine (玫瑰露), which is used in the production of Cantonese sausage (臘腸, 潤腸).
We are served the complimentary dessert of glutinous rice balls in fruity fermented rice soup (什果酒釀丸子), which everyone enjoyed despite being stuffed.
original blogpost with pictures: http://chi-he-wan-le.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-have-turkey-when-theres-beggars.html

I came to Hong Kong many times for work, and of course its food. I have been to many popular local restuarants and this is one of the worst.

I was here with two of my friends and we have decided to try this restuarant since it is so popular.

Being new to the place, we asked the waiter for recommendation and he placed several orders for us without telling us the price. Three of us spent $3300 on several dishes and the sharkfins is already $2000 plus. I thought he would at least have the courtesy to inform us about the price of the sharkfins.

Other than the above, my comments are:

a) sharkfins - too many flavours, if this was served back at my home country, the restuarant would not last operation for more than 1 week.

b) prawns with longjin tea leaves - small and salty.

c) Dong Pou rou - not tender and not tasty.

d) dou miao - salty.

e) frog legs.. only 3-4 pcs..

and yes, this amounts to $3000 plus!!!

For those who has yet to have been there, trust me and forget about it. It is for tourists spot - expensive and tastless...