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Ho Lee Fook's famous char sui. Credit Amanda Kho for The New York Times
Ho Lee Fook
If the pork at Aberdeen Street Social was sublime, the pork at Ho Lee Fook was nearly life-changing. I mean the strips of pork char siu, which refers to a Cantonese method of cooking the meat over fire and giving it a sweet red glaze. Char siu is a staple of Chinese takeout, but I’ve never had takeout that uses Berkshire pigs from Japan. When that caliber of flesh meets this method of preparation, the results are a fatty, flavorful knockout.
Then again, most everything I had at Ho Lee Fook wowed me. The restaurant fuses Cantonese with other Asian traditions as well as any flourishes that the chef, Jowett Yu, deems appropriate. It’s thrillingly unbound, never letting precedent get in the way of deliciousness.
My favorite dish, even better than the pork, comprised slices of wagyu short rib that were arranged on one side of the bone, a green shallot kimchi on the other side and a jalapeño purée through which either or both could be swept. The way the heat of that purée cut the richness of the beef was exhilarating.
The menu sprawls across a half-dozen categories, including “raw,” “roast meat” and “vegetables.” There are fried chicken wings as well as hot-and-sour steak tartare, cabbage-and-pork dumplings as well as clams cooked in a Thai basil and tamarind broth. My companion and I ate twice as much as any two people should, longed to eat more and seriously thought about coming back the next night to do precisely that.
The restaurant’s setting is sexy: a dark underground room with just a few riveting pieces of art, including a white and gray dragon along one wall. This is what a Chinese drug lord’s rec room might look like.
The tables aren’t jammed too close together, even though people clamor for seats. Reservations are taken only for groups of five or more; others wait at nearby bars for the hostess to summon them back. It can take an hour or more.
And it’s worth it, for a feast that’s a bevy of culinary traditions in one — much like Hong Kong.
Ho Lee Fook, 1-5 Elgin Street, Central; holeefook.com.hk. Dinner for two, without drinks or tip, averages 1,050 dollars.
sergio
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