Loyal Dining    來佬餐館  

Hong Kong is a wonderful, culturally diverse place and what's even better is that we would sometimes put our own spin on foreign cultures and create something unique out of it, and the Hong Kong take on Western cuisine is a great example. Loyal Dining, situated on Wellington Street, is a restaurant that serves 60's and 70's Hong Kong-style Western food. The word "Loyal" is a transliteration of the restaurant's Chinese name "來佬" (pronounced "Loi Lo"), an old-school Cantonese term referring to Western imported goods.

As Hong Kong became increasingly affluent a few decades ago, locals started to become fascinated with foreign food and culture, which helped popularize some "Western" restaurants such as Tai Ping Goon, Queen's Cafe or Boston Restaurant. Even though some of these local favourite dishes might sound or taste eccentric (e.g. sirloin steak served with Jasmine rice), they often turn out to be tasty and satisfying.

Loyal Dining has an enticing menu filled with nostalgic dishes and an interesting retro-style decor in a brown-and-yellow theme. What Loyal Dining is also famous for is their late-night dim sums starting from 10p.m., which makes the eatery a good alternative to the 24-hour Tsui Wah sitting across the road. In fact, many people see Loyal Dining as a classier and less noisy option for a post-clubbing feast!

在威靈頓街鏞記酒家再上一點的來佬餐館是吃港式西餐的好地方，有焗豬扒飯，來佬汁雞翼等懷舊菜式。最重要是晚上十點後可以叫點心，吃宵夜不想去翠華的話可以來這裡!

I was simply having a fabulous experience in Loyal Dining, especially when I'm the kind of person treasure the taste of atmosphere as much as the food.Needless to say, the retro 70s tribute easily triggered the specific appetite of Hong Kong local food!

A casual lunch-out with my friend, we were arranged to our table with just a short waiting. We were immediately impressed by the gorgeous interior of the restaurant. The restaurant is furnished with dark wooden table and leather furniture. We can find Hong Kong Oldies pictures on the wall which surpriced us quite a bit of how detail the deco is.

Back to the dinner, we ordered 3 dishes: Loyal's signature Sweet Soy Sauce Pigeon, a dim sum platter, and Hainanese Chicken Rice. The sweet sauce is perfectly matched with the pigeon Unlike others, you can singularly choose your favorite dim sum.Both my friend and I were happy with the lunch, for both foodwise and the restaurant atmosphere. We are more than happy to recommend you all to share our experience!

My friend and I webt to Central for a quick lunch and decided to try loyal dining for the first time. Surprisingly there was no wait at around 12:30. Like i always like to observe first is the restaurants' ambiance. Loyal Is more westernized old style hong kong feel. The tables were lay out pretty close to each other, but luckily the mouse level was bearable because the table next to us had one person. We opted for the lunch set, which range from $90-$110. My friend and I both decided to go with the dim sum sets. there are three different set choices for dim sum, so we each picked out a different set.

Each set came with 3 types of dim sum, a choice of noodle or rice and then a drink(coffee or tea)

For my set, I got noodles, spinach steamed dumpling, Siu mai, and shrimp dumplings (each came with 2 pieces) , and a milk tea. The dim sum was actually better than I expected. My favorite has to be the spinach dumpling. The spinach was flavored perfectly and the wrapping wasn't over cooked and soggy. As for the noodle, it wasn't anything extraordinary but it was good enough that I finished the big bowl. the worst out of everything was the milk tea. Defintely put way too much milk in it. Overall, I love the portion of the meal, it had enough variety to keep me satisdied. I think I will come back to try their other dishes( the baked dishes looked good). Also, for the quick service, I would come back when I crave for some dim sum for lunch.

The restaurant is expensive and charge additional HK$3 for a glass of iced tea !
There is not much choice, the waiter asked you several times to order drink and it is annoying.
We ordered a set for two HK$298, soups + swiss sauce chicken wing + baked pork chop rice + drinks.
The baked pork chop is ok but the swiss sauce chicken wing not so attractive, i think the restaurant is good for tourist only.

We visited the restaurant earlier this month for their so called dim sum buffet and we were not happy with a number of things.

1. we paid our bill with credit card and when the credit card statement came in, the amount did not agree with the credit card receipt we have on hand. Some one at the restaurant had changed the original amount on the credit card slip. INTEGRITY PROBLEMS here.

2. The service was bad. we were seated on the second floor. It took a long time for the ordered dim sum to arrive. When we asked the male server to look up our orders, he either ignored us (and concentrated on his cell phone) or he gave us black face.

3. The food was ok. But since the food took a long time to come or they were never served, so even though it says dim sum buffet, you do not get to eat all you can eat, or whatever you want to eat.

4. The air-conditioning was minimal, almost like not working.

I will strongly advise that you do not go to this restaurant. At that price, the kind of service, AND BEING CHEATED A $70 TIP WHICH WE DID NOT AUTHORIZE, i am sure you find better places to go.

deeply disappointed with the quality of the food. Sirloin and chicken rice were sold out so we were left with the baked chicken rice and dim sum, ok, understandable consider we sat down at 1:55pm. Ordered a souffle as soon as we sat down.

The chow cheung fun was cold. Dim sum tasted overcooked. The "white" soup tasted a bit sour. Baked Portugese Chicken rice was ok. Nothing to brag about.

Souffle never came. Followed up again at 2:40pm and was told we needed to wait another 10 minutes.

I asked for the bill and left. The waiter wasn't even apologetic and black faced when I told him to cancel the souffle. I don't understand wny it took 45 fxxking minutes to make the dessert.

Never ever go back to this joint again.

Reservations available only for parties of 6 or more, but if you arrive at around 12:30pm, you will be seated quite quickly. (per Loyal)

Environment:
We got an upstairs four-seater booth at a corner next to the window. It was pretty spacious, laterally, but the ceiling was quite low and it was rather noisy.

Food:
Baked Pork chop rice set lunch $86+soup and bread + drink First impressions do matter. The cream (of whatever it is...bits of pulsed corn?) soup was absolutely horrific. It is regrettable I did not photograph the object. It was unpalatable. Bland, too thick, lumpy, no substance whatsoever. Probably worse than Campbell soup. I think I tasted bits of corn that weren't even whole kernels.

I ordered the Baked pork chop rice. It looks semi-decent, but because I don't like runny egg, I was turned off by the wobbly egg yolk and emptied the contents onto another plate before devouring the egg white. I would have preferred my baked pork chop rice more burnt on the surface. The sauce was runnier than I liked, and a bit too tart. I believe it didn't do enough time in the oven. I think the layer of sauce should be much thinner. After all the main point should not be in the sauce. It should be the balance between delicious fried rice with a bit of tomato sauce - the sauce should not overpower the egg fried rice. The dish was not hot enough and the interface between sauce and bowl was not scarred. The veggie was not caramelized and were completely smothered in tomato sauce - losing its original flavour. The egg fried rice hiding beneath the tomato sauce was oily and quite dry.

The baked pork chop was quite fatty and I had to remove the fatty bits before eating the chop, which meant I had to remove a substantial bit. I don't like biting into lumps of fat. The chop was well-crumbed, and the crust wasn't too thick. I am not pleased about the meat quality but then you can't expect much I suppose. The piece of pork was quite large. But please be warned that much of it is too fatty.

Hainan Chicken rice + Chinese soup + drink ~$95Everyone else ordered this item. I foolishly neglected their advice and went for the Baked Pork chop rice. This set was much more reasonably priced for its quality. Chinese soup is substantial and I could see plenty of bone, meat and lotus root swimming inside the soup. I had once forkful of rice and it was quite fragrant - but could do with a BIT more chicken grease flavour. But the chicken itself was excellent - plenty of meat, and was tender and oily.

Conclusion:
All in all I believe I would have derived greater utility devouring a $3x 'Brother #1 Baked Pork Chop rice' at Cafe de Coral/Fairwood than eating the only marginally better equivalent at Loyal Dining, and paying so much extra to make it a set, none of the items which were enjoyable. I will NOT come again for baked pork chop rice. I've heard friends saying good things about the dimsum - maybe i'll come back for that.

Nowadays people are always talking about ‘recalling’ our past, ‘revisiting’ our history and ‘treasuring’ our heritage. ‘Loyal Dining’ emphasizes the revisiting of the colonial era of HK during 60s &70s. When we walked in this restaurant and settled down at the upper floor, we totally felt the ‘east meets west’ atmosphere by its decoration and design. You could find numerous of photos which were taken in 60s & 70s recording the ‘memories’ of the colonial HK, which is very precious!

Waiters here are friendly and talkative.

The menu of ‘Loyal Dining’ looks impressive. It’s very stylish that it looks like and feels like Ipad.
Under the strong recommendation, we had chosen two ‘sizzling’ sets: the ‘Loyal signature dish’ 66 Beef Wellington ($198+10%) and the racks of lamb ($178+10%). Both of them served with red soup & bread, potato & ‘seasonal’ veggies in gravy sauce, set drink and dessert. The set drinks and red soups arrived firstly. It seemed a bit weird for me, since I normally have my set drink at the end of the meal instead of the beginning. It seems like it’s rushing you out to finish your meal a.s.a.p.!

It's 7pm and we were told to wait for a table. The ground floor was full. After 15 minutes, we were guided to our table on the 3rd floor, when we observed that BOTH the 2nd floor and the 3rd floor was actually only ~30% full. How rude! Don’t play these tricks on your customers!

To be fair, the food was quite nice, but it’s not cheap too. We will come back when the operations become more mature.

After my birthday happy hour, not one drink but rounds of white wine and shooters till almost 9pm with more than 10 friends, 5 of us would love to have something easy to eat...before drunk. Usually we go Tsui Wah after drinking, but loved to try something new. Have passed by this restaurant many times, read it's press release in newspaper and finally got a chance to try, Happy!

No seat available but it only took around 10 minutes, waiters were very pleasant to arrange us the table. It's kind of "old days memory" with food and beverage that were popular in HK many years ago...quite fun or look at the menu, discussing about the names of different food and drinks.

3 of us ordered the signature one, rice with BBQ pork and foie gras, Chinese name should be something like "rich-man rice". Not bad, especially the foie gras, above expectation based on it's in fact a "cha can ting". If the egg can be more "naturally fried", instead of perfectly round shape, will be even better. However, after drinking some shooters, I lost appetite and didn't finish,

Another friend ordered fried noodle with soy sauce, huge portion and nice; another friend ordered a fried rice with beef and black truffle, surprisingly, the smell of black truffle is perfectly good and balance, yummy!

Satisfied with the food, and the most interesting thing is I had the cream soda with milk, 忌廉溝鮮奶, to me, it's called classic! I had this when I was a kid in local restaurants whenever I came back for holidays. I missed this very much as seems it's not easy to find nowadays. It brought my memories back.

Overall impression was nice, will come over again to try other dishes

We arrived slightly before the peak dinner hour and needn't have to wait for a table. But the restaurant's ground floor filled up very quickly.

Basically, Loyal Dining is a pimped up Char Chan Teng. Pimped up in decor and pimped up in price. Its interiors evokes the colonial era of wood panelling, stained glass and black & white mosaic floors. Waiters are decked in bow ties, vests and aprons. The food however isn't much to wow at. You get your usual char chan teng sort of quality. Sure it has some interesting items on the menu and the presentation isn't bad either. But the skills of the chef does not justify the cost. So essentially, you are paying for the decor and the location. Great for first timers to Hong Kong, trying out char chan teng food and posting pictures of interesting looking plates in quaint restaurants for your facebook profile.

Otherwise, stick with your favourite char chan teng

Very terrible service. We just need some water but we had to wait for around 10 minues. I was very puzzled why there are so many waiters in this restaurant but none of them can do it. I thought because we didn't order some drinks beside water. Finally, we ordered a cescar salad and rice with steamed pork chop. The cescar salad which is costed $78 but only a few vegetables and a few tiny beacons. It's not worth to go again.

Before I stepped into this restaurant, I already have bad impression to their service.

Incident: Though I know this restaurant is located at Wellington Street, I called to ask where it is nearby as I was not quite familiar to Wellington Street.

I called and asked, ' I would like to know if there's any special building nearby so that I could find your restaurant easier?'
The staff answered,' Do you know Yung Kee?'
At that moment, I wasn't quite sure where Yung Kee was as I lived in NT.
I said,' Sorry, I am afraid I didn't know. Is that near Marks and Spencer?'
The staff, "Now, we are in busy hour, I can't answer you now, bye!'

Ok, I arrived anyway. Once I stepped in, there's at least 6 people waiting. I approached the staff and he asked 'what's your surname?'
I said,'Cheung, and table for 3.' He marked it down.
Surprisingly, he didn't give any number card/paper to the customers. We all near to wait and hear our surname to be called carefully.

The staff called the customer one by one. I remembered there was five customers' surname before me.
He didn't call my surname.

Time passed, after 25 minutes, I was still standing there but the people entering later than me all were seated.
I looked at the list, I think he has written me as the wrong surname (don't know if he didn't know how to spell/ didn't hear well).

I was so angry, but... I was still very patient and asked if there was any mistake. Another staff said it was near my turn as I needed 3 seats.
At last, nearly 10 tables after me got seated except me.
I couldn't held and said 'Miss, I think your staff has mis-written my surname! All the people got seated except me!'
She insisted as I needed 3 seats. But after I complained, she suddenly said 'there's a table now.'
to the power n......

I think the waiting system has some problem. It is better to give a number to the customers as sometimes it is very hard for the staff to hear clearly (there are lots of customers and it is VERY VERY noisy there) Secondly, there maybe two person having the same surname.

Ok, continue... we ordered 來佬汁炒牛河 and baked pork chop rice.
After a few minutes, the waiter gave us pork chop with a plate of plain rice. I said it was not my order... so we need to wait again...

來佬汁炒牛河 is fine, not too oily.
腐乳砂糖多士 not as good as it seems to be.
nothing special except it is extremely hot.

I think I have tried their food already, no need to come back because of disappointing service and the very noisy environment... we sat on the second floor, all the customers are chatting noisily as the area is too small. My friend and I nearly need to shout out our words to communicate.

Having to linger in Central in the morning this month, I wanted to try some new breakfast places. Seeing this new restaurant across the street I decided to give it a try.

The first feeling was already great, as the place was well decorated as in the 50s but with a modern way of lighting design to spot up. At 9:30 it was packed with people, and lucky I got the second last table. The tidily dressed waiter presented the menu including 4 types of breakfast sets all at $30.

Since I did not feel like big pieces of meat I decided to go for the Chinese set, which came with the daily congee (they had two types for you to choose) and steam rice roll with your choice of filling (or Chinese fried noodles) with and tea or coffee. The waitress informed me that daily congee was Abalone with chicken – wow, I just thought to myself, the restaurant really wanted to impress customer.
The congee came in a nice new bowl, not so full though but hot and steamy. I tried one spoon - it was full of abalone and chicken taste well blended with the sweetness of rice congee. Excellent! Then came the rice roll with minced beef, it was a big dish, with 3 pieces, and the soy sauce served on the side. Merely this dish in any Chinese dim sum place in Central would worth $30+. I tried – the rice roll was very smooth, but a bit too soft and the minced beef quite oily. I could only have 2 pieces and had to leave the third. Still, good value for money.
I read the critics before some said the Hong Kong style milk tea was not good. But as of the day I tried it was even better than Chui Wah next door. The tea was strong and well balanced, and with the right amount of condensed milk. It was also real hot when being served. A real satisfactory breakfast!

It was so satisfactory that the place became my usual breakfast place in Central now. I had tried almost all of its breakfast set in the past 3 weeks and all of them were so fulfilling. On top of all, I love most that they serve customers with their heart and attend to every detail – let customers take the best available seat, serving drinking water, carefully set table, big soft napkins, daily little reminder card on table, luxuriously clean restroom with Andreas toilet roll… you can see the compassion of the place. Thank you, Loyal! You have made my day!

Last Sunday evening, 4 of us (2 adults + 2 kids) went there for dinner. My husband noticed this new restaurant from newspaper's recommendation... and therefore we decided to give it a try.

We were seated at the 2nd floor (top level). The place was not full yet. We found the place is 'freezing'... and therefore we asked if we can change to another table. (better... at least the wind not blowing straight to us) After seated, we decided to order a Chicken Wing set for 2 which shared by our kids. My husband ordered the mixed grill in sizzling plate set and I had the chicken rice in white sauce. Since the kids would love to try the Soufflé, we checked with the waiter that the cooking time would require 30 to 40 mins. Therefore, we ordered at the beginning too.

After a while, the soups come with the chicken wing set came first. It were served with bread.. but no butter!... since the kids were fine, we didn't bother to ask for some. Then, rice (which come with the Chicken Wing set) came too! (...So fast !!!). However, the soup which come with the mixed grill set not even served... until after the main course! (Unbelivable!!!) Every dishes were served so fast... and our table was not able to accommodate! Suddenly, the Soufflé was served too!... That's really bad... the waiter just said it's ready to serve... regardless that he noticed we had not yet finished our food!

The service was bad (not sure if that's because of lacking is staff ...!), we kept asking for plates, bowls, cutlery... anyway... the worst part came. After we finished the food, we ordered the drinks which come with the sets. We waited for almost 20 mins, nothing came. We asked another waiter to check.. and he told us that our order were not found in the system!!! So, we repeated our order to him, and watched him to make sure he put into the system. Our kids started complaining again because it's really cold there. The waiter told us that this couldn't be adjusted... anyway... we still waited "patiently" for the drinks and desserts to come. After some time, we could see the drinks were ready outside the pre-serving area... just the waiter didn't want to serve !!! My husband asked him to bring over the drinks... so he was forced to bring them over. Again, after 10 mins, I can see the dessert were also ready there, NO ONE go there and pick them !!!! I couldn't help to complain about this... how can a restaurant required the customers to tell the waiters that the food were ready to serve!!! NO service at all... The mananger came to apologize, but it's already too late.

The food not especially good, the place is freezing, the waiters not professional ... don't think we will come again!