Kei Heung Cafe

I stopped in, hoping to spend some time in a classic Hong Kong café. The décor looked the part: quiet, unassuming, slightly cluttered.
Technically, this place is a 冰室 (bing sut) instead of a cha chaan teng. A bing sut is an even more old-​school ancestor of the famous cha chaan teng, characterized by 1950’s furniture and that yellowy hue of East-​meets-​West colonialism. While most modern bing sut now serve meals and are synonymous with cha chaan teng, they used to be places where people only got drinks.
Kei Heung Café goes halfway — serving toasts, macaroni soups and spaghettis — but no pork chop over rice, or any rice dishes at all! I was craving shrimp with lobster sauce over rice since seeing it at a cha chaan teng the night before, and spent many sad minutes deciphering the menu and seeing «rice» nowhere.
The milk tea was fine. Macaroni soup isn’t something I’d voluntarily consume back home, but it seemed popular here and in Hong Kong in general, so I went for it. The broth tasted only of chicken bouillon, aided by a sprinkle of white pepper, and the pasta was limp and difficult to chase around in the shallow, Western-​style bowl. I can see how this odd (to me) meal incites deep nostalgia for Hong Kong natives.
Wish I’d gotten my shrimp over rice, but this was a pleasant place to sip milk tea and think about historical Hong Kong without being too much of an objectifying ass about it. My tea and small dinner cost 31HKD, and I can’t complain.