This place is conveniently located behind Times Square in a less crowded street (though the traffic jam can be pretty bad sometimes). You can see they put in a good effort in the renovation, with attention to details which makes it feel more upmarket, somewhere you can take a friend from out of town to eat without having to apologise for the dirt and mess. There is a little courtyard at the back which is great for chilling out too. The tables are a little small and close to one another, but given that the restaurant is rather small, I couldn't fault them for trying.
The tea was of a good quality, but the staff needed reminding to refill them. We ordered a $48 set which includes a dish of "saliva" chicken 口水雞 and spicy/sour potato noodles 酸辣粉, which also includes a drink of either tea, soda, soya (+$2 for cold drinks). We had the marinated eggplant and marinated beef tendon (though I would have liked to try the beef shank too), and also a bowl of Sichuan numbingly spicy noodles with nuts 四川燃燒麵. You can ask for different levels of spiciness, and we went for the ultimate challenge of ordering everything in super spicy, which in retrospect could have been tempered as you end up not being able to taste anything. Having said that, the beef tendon was a good sized dish and flavourful, being chewy but not plasticky/gum-like. The chicken was initially disappointing, as we got a dish with 2 pieces of meat and the rest was bones and chicken. We spoke to the manager and he gave us another dish of chicken breast, which was more like it. The eggplant was aesthetically presented, half an eggplant faced down, with chilli and sauce drizzled over it, and was cooked to just the right texture. The spicy sour noodles came in a pipping hot bowl, enough for 2 to share, and seasoned with spices and herbs. The cold numbing 燃燒麵 was nice, the only thing was that you can tell it was pre-cooked and left in the bowl, which is why when it was served it was in a clump and had to be slowly teased out and mixed with the sauce, but other than that, the taste was good.
As it was so spicy, we ended up having 1 soya milk (they also do a cucumber soya milk which I saw a lot of people ordering) and 3 sodas to put out the fire. The couple sitting next to us was from mainland ?sichuan, and even they said this was one of the spiciest restaurants in HK that they've tried. But the best thing about this restaurant is the price. It's unbeatable - everything was below $40!! Our bill came to $180 and we were pretty full. Go and make the best of it before they raise the prices once the place is more established and the ruthless landowners jack up the rent.
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