Dim Sum is another national dish for Hong Kong, most tourists will come to Hong Kong wanting to have dim sum for a few meals while the older local Hong Kong residents will always drop by their favourite restaurants for their dose of dim sum and tea for breakfast. In order to stand out from the thousands of restaurants in Hong Kong offering the same fare, some have incorporated new elements into their menu.
Chau Kee is located near Hong Kong University and has many local food TV programs introducing the restaurant. One of the signature which made Chau Kee famous is their lava toast.
This page of the menu shows their signature dishes which are very popular and you will definitely see a plate of each on everybody’s table.
The café/restaurant is pretty small and is very popular amongst the young as well as the locals staying around the area. At any one time, you can only fit 20 persons in the restaurant and each seat is very tight with minimal space for movement.
Some of the dishes I love from this café is this steam bean curd roll with fresh pork and shrimp and yam. The roll was very juicy and savoury and the soup that came with it was milky and creamy in taste.
Unlike the usual rice roll, they have a version which comes with fried dough and fried shrimp and seaweed as toppings and the sauce is at the side for dipping instead. The rice roll is soft and thin with a crunchy fried dough in the middle.
They also have fried rice roll in XO sauce and beans sprout. This dish resembles our local fried carrot cake with XO sauce except rice rolls are used.
They also have the carrot cake version here where the carrot cake is fried till crispy outside with a soft and smooth inside.
They also have traditional dim sum here like the siew mai which is the meat and crab dumpling. Each dumpling is stuffed huge with prawn and pork stuffing and topped with prawn and flying fish roe.
The har gao which is prawn dumplings also has very thin skin and a juicy prawn wrapped inside.
Now for the more modern dim sum which is the shrimp paste fried toast with sesame seeds. The toast is stuffed with prawn meat and pan fried till crispy and golden brown and eaten with creamy mayonnaise. This is not something you find from traditional dim sum places but this is definitely a crowd pleaser.
Saving the best for the last is the best selling signature dish which got this restaurant in many blogs, TV shows and interview. The golden lava toast. The outside of the toast looks like French toast which is fried till golden brown and inside this toast is salted egg yolk custard which will flow out like golden lava. You can see it in action below. After seeing it, what is there not to love?
Unlike lava buns, the custard is very limited but the toast has never ending custard and there is more than sufficient salted egg lava custard where you can dip each piece of your toast. I will make my way here just for this toast.
Address: Tung Lee Mansion, Basement H1, 1C-1K Water St, Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong
Operating hours: 8 am to 6 pm
Nearest station: HKU Station ( Exit B2 and turn right – walk up the hill for 10 mins before turning left and you will find the restaurant)
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