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A casual restaurant serving Vietnamese pho is one of columnist Andrew Sun’s favourites. There are too many restaurants in Hong Kong for anyone to eat at them all, he says, and who would want to? Photo: Shutterstock
Opinion
Mouthing Off
by Andrew Sun
Mouthing Off
by Andrew Sun

No-fuss Hong Kong comfort food often beats top restaurants’ complex meals, just as Barbie beat Oppenheimer at the box office

  • The cost and sheer number of restaurants in Hong Kong make it impossible for even a food journalist to visit them all, especially the expensive ‘best’ ones
  • Some of the most appealing are lesser-known comfort food spots. As with ‘Barbenheimer’ this summer, the casual option can be what people want most
Andrew Sun
Andrew Sun
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The most frequent question asked of me is, “What’s your favourite restaurant?” The second most common? “Have you tried (insert the name of any new, trendy restaurant) yet?”

The former is an impossible enough query to respond to. “Favourite” always depends on what I think the person wants to hear from me – are they asking in terms of fine dining, casual, Asian or Western? My particular preference at any moment also depends on my mood.

The latter question is even more difficult to respond to. As a food journalist, you’re assumed to have eaten at every restaurant in the city and to return regularly to all the top chefs’ outlets to check out the latest dishes.

Wrong! The truth is most nights I am (and prefer to be) at home with a simple home-made dinner or a plate of leftovers punched up with ginger and scallion sauce, kimchi, or some XO sauce from a jar.
Caviar and champagne, while perhaps nice as a treat, are too expensive for many of us to afford regularly. Besides, who would want to dine like this every night? Photo: Shutterstock

I probably do eat out a bit more than the average diner, but there are lots of famous, popular establishments I haven’t tried and, honestly, I don’t feel compelled to try.

For one thing, even if I did want to eat out all the time, I don’t get paid enough to afford lunch and dinner at new restaurants seven days a week. There are too many private kaiseki rooms and posh designer eateries costing thousands for a meal that are just a bit too rich for my blood.

Why recreate McDonald’s fries when the real thing’s so accessible?

According to Hong Kong government data from 2021, there are over 16,000 licensed restaurants in the city. No glutton, however ambitious, could cover that spectrum even in a lifetime. So we all pick and choose what we might find interesting, novel and worthy of attention.

You might be surprised at some of the establishments I have never set foot in. Sometimes it’s because they have so much buzz there’s no need for me to contribute any additional coverage.

As a bit of a contrarian, I generally avoid chasing trendy things. If everybody says a particular venue has the best yakitori in town, I am compelled to skip the queue to prove there is somewhere else just as good.
A woman eats fresh seafood at an expensive-looking restaurant. Sun says that while he eats out more than the average diner, he more often than not gravitates toward casual restaurants rather than high-end ones. Photo: Shutterstock

In general, I would say some of my favourite places to eat in the city are not venues that would make any “best of” lists.

There’s a simple Vietnamese joint I consistently return to, but not because it makes the best pho in town. In fact, the soup is just OK.

But when I’m feeling lazy and peckish, it’s good enough. Also, their staff are friendly, the setting is comfortable and unpretentious, the price is reasonable, and it’s within walking distance of my flat.

Delete Deliveroo, Foodpanda from your phone – you don’t need them any longer

I think sometimes we undervalue comfort dining, although it’s often presented as a gastronomic fad.

It’s a very cheffy thing to serve mac and cheese but “elevated” (and just as often, ruined) with black truffles, caviar, lobster or even fancy goat cheese.

These days, more customers do seem to eschew formal and fancy for classic and comfortable.

A hamburger topped with sliced black truffles. Many chefs turn to “elevated” comfort food, in which they add expensive ingredients to traditionally casual dishes, sometimes ruining them. Photo: Shutterstock

We don’t always need the fuss, the tablecloth or to be in places deemed the “best”. In uncertain times, folks just want to be somewhere feeling content and relaxed.

To use a current movie analogy, most viewers agree Oppenheimer is an in-depth tour de force of layered narrative with deep themes and big issues. Yet, it was Barbie’s fun-filled storytelling and colourful palette that summer film-goers ended up lining up for more.
Sometimes, all we need is good Barbie food.
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