While many of us love travelling to new cities, not everyone can afford to enjoy dining at the best and most popular restaurants due to budget constraints. So we opt to dine at places that won’t put a strain on our purses.
In Hong Kong, there are plenty budget-friendly restaurants to chose from. Here are five as suggested by The Guardian:
Tak Fat Beef Ball
This small noodle stall is hidden in the bowels of the Haiphong Road Temporary Market – which is temporary in name only as it’s been open for more than 30 years. Walk past the butchers, flower stalls and fruit and vegetable vendors, and head deep into the centre of the market, looking for customers eating noodles served in bright orange bowls with yellow spoons. The star of the show is the beef balls, served in a rich, light broth with your choice of noodles, and optional beef tripe or brisket.
Delicately flavoured with ginger and dried tangerine peel, the balls have the perfect “bouncy” texture beloved by the Chinese – often mistakenly regarded as “rubbery” by the uninitiated.
A bowl will set you back around £2.
Address: Haiphong Road Temporary Market, 390 Haiphong Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, +852 2376 1179.
Opening hours: 8.30am-8.30pm
Tsui Wah
This cha chaan teng (tea cafe) started off as a single restaurant in 1967, but there are now more than a dozen branches all over the territory. It’s beloved by locals, who come here for uniquely Hong Kong comfort food, which has influences from the Brits, Indians, Americans and other immigrants, served up with a Chinese twist. The extensive menu includes toast with condensed milk, sweetened milk tea (hot or with ice), Swiss chicken wings, curried beef brisket with rice, Hainan chicken rice, beef with tomatoes, macaroni noodles in soup with preserved vegetables, and instant noodles with a variety of toppings. The branch on Wellington Street in Central – steps away from the bar and clubbing area of Lan Kwai Fong – is probably the most raucous, at least late at night, filled with tourists and expatriates huddled next to local customers.
Average meal around £5 per head.
Branch address: including GF-2F, 15-19 Wellington Street, Central, +852 2525 6338. Visit tsuiwahrestaurant.com for more branch information.
Opening hours: 24 hours
Tung Po
A raucous seafood restaurant on the second floor of the Java Road wet market run by owner and maître d’ Robby Cheung, who is famed for his wacky hairstyles and white rubber wellies, and, as evenings progress, for cranking up the music and getting all his customers to sing along to We Will Rock You (he also attempts – not very successfully – to moonwalk to Michael Jackson). Fine dining it isn’t – but if you choose wisely, you can have a good meal. Regulars know to pre-order a few dishes – the deep-fried pig’s trotters, razor clams (especially delicious with black bean sauce), squid ink pasta with cuttlefish balls, and fried chicken with garlic. Beer is served in bowls, the “napkins” are rolls of toilet paper in plastic dispensers, and the atmosphere is friendly and convivial.
Meal around HK$150 (around £13) per head.
Address: 2F Java Road Municipal Services Building, 99 Java Road, North Point, +852 2880 5224.
Opening hours: 5.30pm-12.30am
Under Bridge Spicy Crab
The dish typhoon shelter crab was born and bred in Hong Kong, named after the small coves used by fisherman who took shelter there during stormy weather. Facilities on the boats were limited, and the fishermen usually cooked whatever they caught, giving birth to this messy, pungent dish of crab fried with masses of garlic, chillies, black beans and spring onions – a small amount is delicious with white rice or congee (rice porridge), accompanied with a beer. There are several Under Bridge Spicy Crab branches within a block of each other, and the original is as basic as they come – the tables are covered with plastic sheets which, at the end of the meal, are gathered up with the crab shells and thrown away.
Meal around £15 per head.
Address: Several branches, but the original is at 429 Lockhart Road, Causeway Bay, +852 2573 7698, Visit underspicycrab.com for ore branch locations.
Opening hours: 5pm-5am
ABC Kitchen
Like the other food markets in Hong Kong, the perimeter of Queen Street Cooked Food Market is lined with stalls where customers eat under fluorescent lights on hard stools at fold-out tables. ABC is different though – it’s the only one with tablecloths (red and white check), there will almost certainly be bottles of wine on the tables, and it’s probably the only one to have some non-Chinese diners. The restaurant was opened several years ago by staff from the Hong Kong institution M at the Fringe when it closed, and serves up some of its most famous dishes, including roast suckling pig, beef Wellington, braised lamb shank and dessert souffles. It’s not quite as good as M, but then it is a lot cheaper.
Average lunch around £5 per head, three-course dinner around £20.
Address: 1F Queen Street Cooked Food Market, 38 Des Voeux Road West, Sheung Wan, +852 9278 8227.
Opening hours: Mon-Sat noon-2.30pm, 6.30pm-10pm, Sun 6.30pm-10pm
For more budget-friendly dining suggestions in Hong Kong, read the link below:
Read full article:
Hong Kong’s Top 10 Budget Restaurants
Reposted from: The Guardian
Picture credit:
The Guardian, Photobucket, Hong Kong Free Press, Blogspot, Blogspot, HK Magazine
More from Zafigo:
How travelling has made me optimistic
Reasons why frequent travellers are more likely to be successful
Get all the latest travel updates from Zafigo. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
