Ho Hak Shan Tung     好客山東   (Closed)

Eight hungry caterpillars slithered down bonham road and arrived at this small, homey restaurant. It was quite full. One friendly waitress helped rearrange some chairs, move some diners around and created a table for 8. So nice of her. We were very rowdy. Apologies to those trying to watch TVB soaps.

Environment:
One cannot expect much. It is a very local restaurant so please expect a couple other diners sitting at your table if there are empty seats. The waiters will arrange. You have no grounds for objection.

Food:Roasted shredded Shandong chicken on greensChicken thigh/drumstick meat was used, so every bit was succulent and smooth, not rough (I don't think I ran into any chicken breast). Seasoning was just right - a nice mixture of sweet and salt. Deliberately omitted the greens (coriander mainly, which I avert). Served cold. Cold is good.

Chilled cucumber marinated in garlic dressingNOT a palate cleanser, because of how heavily seasoned it is, with garlic. You will emerge from this restaurant with a strong garlicky aftertaste from only a couple pieces of cucumber. The cucumber was chilled, fresh and moist. Slightly slimy, in a pleasant sort of way. Slightly briny too, probably because a bit of salt was sprinkled on top, or was used for soaking the cucumber a bit.

Chicken with shredded cucumber and bean starch sheets in yummy peanut/sesame dressingIf one were to choose any chicken-related dish at all, I would recommend this one!! Everything I love being served on the same plate is too cool a dream. Peanut/sesame dressing in itself goes well with anything, imho (At home, boiled veggies are anointed by a drizzle of sesame dressing which really brings up the simple dish by a few notches). Anyway. Sometimes you'd find a super thick sauce which kind of clogs up your mouth a bit (not that i mind), but I found that this watery version works extremely well too. Your health-conscious self don't wanna eat too much dressing anyway. The most special feature which distinguishes Ho Hak Shan Tung with other restos is the type of bean sheet used. I've come across many white sheets with an opacity like horfun (rice noodles). This one was almost translucent. Texture-wise, this translucent bean starch sheet had better bite - al dente almost, in the Chinese fashion. Bouncy and slithery. But not rubbery so it's not difficult to chew. Accompanied by the same delicious chicken and finely shredded cucumber, it is a delight.

Chive and pork dumplings x2A big fan of chive and pork dumplings. No complaints - the filling was juicy but there cld've been more chives. Tasted good though. I would come back anytime for the filling. About the skin - a bit thick by average standards, but I'm a carb lover so I didn't mind at all. Actually helps balance the saltiness of the filling, so its' good. But be warned that it's quite floury. Not thin like the skin of soup-infused dumplings (xiao long bao).

Seafood dumplings CAUTION.
Didn't take a picture because they look basically identical to any other dumplings but...I did not enjoy the filling at all. It was pasty, the texture resembled that of stale fish although it certainly didn't taste that way. But it wasn't a very pleasant experience - I'd rather have two more chive n pork dumplings!

Dan Dan Noodles - mildly hotNot a big fan because i don't like hot food. This isn't too hot actually, but I much prefer sesame/peanut-butter based noodle soup!

Jaa Jeung Noodles - salty!The noodle texture is identical to that of the Dandan noodle. The 'meat sauce' is savoury and fatty. A bit boring in the sense that I couldn't taste much other than dark soy with a bit of sugar. I didn't like the texture of the sauce either - very floury and fatty - lack of bite. Really would want more chunks of pork in there.

Conclusion:
Will certainly revisit!! There is no reason why anyone living/studying/working in the vicinity shouldn't visit once. You are missing out on good cheap comfort food!

Though having lived in SYP more than 20 years, I have never noticed this food shop.

Last week, I tried 3 dishes.

Siu Long Bao: Very high standard. Thin flour skin and very juicy inside. The pork inside is not too fat nor too lean. I have one bite all. The juice is so hot which hurt my mouth. Gotta not be so greedy.

Fried Shanghai thick noodles: The plate of dish contains at least 2 and a half bowls of noodles. It costs only $35. It is not oily. Pork and vegetables amount is even.

I can't stop eating as it was too delicious. So, I further ordered 5 dumplings. Usually a plate contains 10 dumplings, but I am afraid I couldn't finish all, so I ordered 5 only. The staff allowed me to do so, very flexible. When the dish arrived, there are 6!!! Bonus!
80% vegetables and 20 finely minced pork. I love it.

However, I start to get thirsty after eating Fried Shanghai noodles. So next time, I will only try Siu Long Bao and dumpling to see if I still get thirsty.

At night, I could held ordering of hand-tear chicken. Though the chicken seems very fresh. The taste could be stronger. And the texture is too coarse for me.

I would give a full mark for Siu Long Bao. I am sure you could hardly criticize it.

P.S Half of the custumers are speaking Putonghua there, I guess all are local mainland Chinese. I think it shows how local and fine dish they are, or else the local mainland Chinese wouldn't come.

Never tried "Shandong" cuisine before and have read magazines introducing this shop.
The shop was 90% full when we got there at 7, which there was a queue later
Small shop with only 2/3 staff on the night we visited

MenuFood here are quite cheap, and below are what we've tried

手撕雞Unlike typical 手撕雞 that is hard and dry, their 手撕雞 is really tender and nice! Lots of cucumbers at the bottom of the dish has reduced the heaviness of the dish. Yum

香椿炒蛋香椿 is said to be a special type of veg only available in Spring and its made to be preserved veg. Hmmm for me the taste of the 香椿 is not special. The egg was nice but there was too much 香椿 that made it too salty. Some of the 香椿 are also too hard which affected the overall texture.

Dumplings (Lamb, 西洋菜 & 白菜）We ordered 5 of each flavor. Think Lamb & 西洋菜 were nice!

The portion is very reasonable considering the cost, and its delicious!
Worth a try

We thought of going to the Safety Stop@Water Street for our lunch, and yet were disappointed to learn that it only started business next monday. Having no other particular place to eat in mind, we wandered along the steep waterstreet and spot the bright yellow sign of the Ho Hak Shan Dong, which can be directly translated as 'The Friendly people from Shan Dong'. I had been to this place before and knew that they make nice Shan Dong cuisine and thus there we went for our lunch.

The place was filled with customers and the sight that surprised me-I had never thought that a small restaurant along the somehow quiet Water Street could be that popular in the neighborhood! Anyway, we were lucky enough as there were no more nor less than three empty seats in the place, despite having to share a round table.

After studying the extensive menu we ordered some noodles, dumplings(boiled and fried), as well as some cold dishes like the cucumber and the shedded chicken on rice noodle. As for drinks, I had a cup of cold soyabean paste to myself.

As we waited for the food to arrive, I couldnt help but notice how the waitresses worked and moved around briskly in the crowded place (people kept coming and leaving) and yet a smile could constantly be seen on her face. Her job is a tough one, and yet she seemed to be enjoying every bit of it, and was greeting the customers with such politeness that could rarely be found in similar restaurants around HK (count not those 5-star restaurants).Back to the food - the cucumber landed the table after our drink came - the soyabean drink tasted naturally sweet and was quite smooth in texture, perfect in a warm afternoon when iced - and from the coarse ends of the vegetable one could guess that it was genuinely padded until it broke open instead of neatly chopped. However the flavour of the garlic seasoning could not blend with the cucumber and it tasted fresh yet bland in the interior. More through mixing or finer cucumbers had to be used. The dumplings hit second. We ordered 10 beef and celery dumpling in Shan Dong style. The coating was not very thick when compared to 'Ging Heung Gau's' but i felt like it was a little too mushy and soft - had it been overcooked for like, 20 seconds? But the fillings of beef and chopped celery was very juicy and tasty. It tasted a little like the beef balls you find everytime you yum-cha, only with the addition of the distinctive taste of celery. It was quite good except from the small issue on the dumpling wrap.

It's not a joke on April fool's day, we had a fantastic meal for $60 a head. Cracker of a deal. Alright the service was haphazard because there was only dad and mum in the kitchen and the daughter manning the whole floor, they missed out a couple of our orders and the tea wasn't refilled when I was dying of thirst, but otherwise, you can't fault them for not trying their best.

We ordered the hand shredded chicken that came on top of a bed of cucumbers - the chicken was acceptable and not too tough but it wasn't the most tender pieces out there, and the cucumbers were soaked in soy sauce rather than a vinegary kind. The cold sliced potato lacked taste but the texture was nice.We had 2 types of dumplings, the beef and veg which was highly advertised in the shop at $36 for 10 pieces, and the vegetarian ones (they had sold of the fish kind). We also had the xiaolongbao, 5 hot pieces in a bamboo steamer, with the skin just tender enough to hold all the juices in (and it was juicy too).3 kinds of noodles too: the dan dan mian which was mild in flavour compared to the sichuan/shanghainese ones, but the noodles were thick and chewy, though there was more soup than noodles. The mutton noodles was a much bigger portion, piled high with thinly sliced half fat mutton and cabbage. The last was a shanghainese stir fry "thick" noodles, which wasn't greasy and had the right amount of saltiness to it.The spring onion "donuts" was piping hot straight out of the deep fry, and tasted like the skin of samosa my friend said, and we didn't find too many pieces of spring onion in it either. Dessert was sesame dumplings (tong yuan) in a rice wine sauce. The dumplings were stock standard, but I was disappointed in the soup which was too gooey and bland, like someone had put too much flour in it to thicken the base.Do note that the food didn't come in this order, but then who cares, it all ends up in the same place. I've picked out my dishes for the next time when I visit again... chilled bean sheets with chicken, steamed shantung big buns, spring onion and beef with pancakes, shantung 滷麵 "lo mian" and all the other stuff on the menu.... it's not fine dining, but you get fed well for the price you're paying.

Having had my eye on this little restaurant since its opening, I finally got to try this place for lunch with my brother. We arrived at 1.30pm to find only one other table occupied. He asked "Is this place any good? why is it so empty?" I had my doubts too, but set aside these thoughts and looked through the menu.

We first debated on whether we wanted appetizers, which we then decided against because we wanted two kinds of dumplings. So our next question was whether we wanted dan dan mian or jia jiang mian.... I would've gone for the latter but my brother chose the former so the former it was.

First to arrive was...
Milk Tea ($10) - here they used evaporated milk instead of my preferred choice of condensed milk. Not bad but not ideal.

Dan Dan Mian (Noodles in Spicy Peanut Broth) ($26) - the version here is quite different from the Shanghainese restaurants' we've tried. It is quite watery, but still has strong flavours of peanut and chilli in. The ground meat (pork?) was quite lean too. The noodles reminded me of the ones I had in Sha Tin 18 - al dente and thick, with no noodle being the exact same size, most probably because they are hand-cut! I didn't really like the broth, but would try another noodle dish gladly if I come again.

Ten Dumplings - half were Shandong Fresh Fish Dumplings and half Vegetarian Dumplings ($33)
These dumplings were massive - bigger than I had seen before for sure. I would've preferred them to be cooked less long, as the wrappers were overly soft for me. I'll bear that in mind on my next visit to tell them to cook the dumplings for a shorter period.
Anyway, I was half expecting them to be pre-made (either frozen or refrigerated) but found out they were made-to-order. How do I know? Well when I first bit into one of the fish dumplings it was pork. I told them this, and the waiter/cook came to identify the mishap and said he'd make (wrap) new ones for me and took away the other 4 'fish' dumplings.

Meanwhile I tried the vegetarian dumplings, which were filled with mostly green vegetables, not like the mushroom and cucumber(?) filling in Din Tai Fung. I also detected a tiny amount of sesame oil present to give it a much appreciated flavour. I would choose these vegetarian dumplings over DTF any day, but the wrapping used here is another matter...way too soft!

Our Xiao Lung Baos ($25) (wrongly translated as 'Little Dragon Buns' on their menu!) had a very nice pleat, but the wrappers seemed too big for the pork fillings...Moreover, one of the five dumplings had 'deflated', because of a puncture in the wrapper as well =(

The dumplings taste-wise was not bad - the all-pork filling was well seasoned and juicy. In the remaining four dumplings there was quite a lot of juice, and was even better with a little ginger and black vinegar. Although the skin was very thin, it was not elastic enough (like DTF's) and so they broke much easier if one isn't careful when transferring them...

Last to arrive was the fish dumplings which earlier had been sent back... Indeed the chef had made fresh ones for us and we were genuinely grateful. The wrappers this time was not overcooked either! They had a slight bite to it. The filling was a type of white fish that was quite meaty, minced with some spring onions. Again, with vinegar these dumplings were lovely. These were my brothers preference between the two (fish and vegetarian) dumplings we ordered.

Would I come back? Yes! Prices here are very reasonable for a hearty meal, and there is quite a long menu. Even with several visits I would still not be able to cover all the appetizers / dim sums / hot dishes / noodles / rice dishes available here!

For full post with more pix see: http://gastronomerr.blogspot.com/2010/07/ho-hak-shan-tung.html

Its useful when one sees reviews of so many smaller restaurants already covered by other contributors who may have recognised some good hidden gems and either wrote up the 1st reviews, or at least tried them early on, such as those of GourmetKC and 陳真. Anyway its not usually my expertise to do so and discover such shops, as I haven't even tried the many bigger and established famous shops out there! So I'm sometimes reaping the rewards of someone else's hard work, who might have taken risks and gambled on trying it for us first, whereas I then conveniently rock up to eat at the shops with better reviews.... Anyway I thought this shop 好客山東 was old and already established, as I had no HSDPA net access to check, so just walked in to eat anyway - & purely by accident I found this shop to be brand new. Opened by 3 Shangdong partners, who were determined to serve authentic 山東 stuff to HK.

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山東炸醬麵 -
This in fact differs from typical Beijing Jia Jiang Mein. Boss chef said many 山東炸醬麵 served in HK are not too 正宗, just borrowing the name. One of key differences is that the meat should be hand diced into cubes so it retains a natural meat texture, not minced into ground meat in Beijing's version. I asked the chef why there isn't much sauce for mixing with my well cooked white pulled noodles... The answer is that the 山東炸醬's sauce is not as sweet as 北京炸醬 but tastes way more savoury due to its special fermented sauce used, sometimes they serve a even darker-black colour up there in Shangdong province! Which means - you could keep mixing more & more sauce with the 北京炸醬 noodles and it'll still ever remain mildly sweet and balanced, whereas the 山東 version cannot as it becomes overly salty if too much is added. 佢咁講我咁信先. The sauce is made of diced pork, zucchini, mushrooms & cucumber.

羊肉水餃 -
The skin on this tasted better than its street-stall skills like wrapping. Its not super thick but kinda balanced. Some pieces had over-boiled skins whereas overall it was done quite well. The lean lamb's taste was strong, which is a good thing. The filling is great as it was moist, slightly fluffy and not looking like they'd once floated in an unflushed toilet.

韮菜豬肉水餃 -
This was chives and pork. It was quite good too. Better than 王府 and probably on par with 老北京 - to me many shops serve similar edible quality anyway. A shop I can recall right now which probably made slightly better dumplings is 京城 in Quarry Bay.

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- IF YOU WANT TO TRY WHAT THE BOSS WANTS TO TELL YOU IS AUTHENTIC SHANGDONG FOOD, ITS WORTH A TRY. ITS CHEAP, AFFORDABLE.

- I'LL SAY I'LL RATE IT ROUGHLY A '3' TO A '4', BUT HAVENT TRIED MANY DISHES & SO I SHALL BE MORE LENIENT, ESPECIALLY FOR A NEW SHOP.