Mrs. Pound

Mrs. Pound is a fictitious character, in fact, the photos the bar uses is a famous local actress from the 60’s who passed away but is iconic to the era when Hong Kong was in the last decades of British rule.
The drinks are decent! The starters and larger plates were tasty. Staff friendly. Manager, a local man that spent time in the States a bit pushy but friendly. Prices are a bit dear.
What is neat about Mrs. Pound is it still has the store front of a chop chop stamp store. And the lighting strangely reminds me of Vegas where day and night outside is irrelevant to the fun to be had inside.
I would most certainly go back and while away a bit of time. Ideal snogging spot in the back ^^

I went here with two others on a Saturday night around 9:30 and we were able to sit right away. We ordered some plates to share: Mexican corn, chicken wings, Avocado fries, poutine, and tuna wraps. I loved the avocado fries, Mexican corn, and the tuna! The chicken wings tasted too strongly of Sichuan pepper, I would not order again. And the poutine was decent, the beef was extremely tender. Our wait staff and host were great, and I loved the environment!

I walk by Mrs. Pound every day in route to the gym. I have helped a few unknowing clientele figure out how to get into the mysterious «chop/​stamp» exteriored front door on occasion, even though I have not been there myself. In my head, I kind of thought this place part hype, part mystery, part build up… which is never really a good way to tee up a restaurant, because there was nothing in my head that was excited about the food or drink.
A few things…
1) We went there early at 6PM on a Thursday night for dinner (so there was no crowd, no line, quick customer service) and as such, we set it up to avoid any disappointment at this restaurant that does not take reservations, has maybe less than 50 spots for diners and can often get busy.
2) We enjoyed every recommendation the manager suggested and were not disappointed. Kimchi Short Rib Roll, Avocado Fries, Rendang Poitine, Wagyu Fried Rice. Items are small in size, designed for sharing, fresh, hot from the kitchen, full of flavors. The menu items are fun, although the list is not extensive and the food is not necessarily cheap (average price per item is probably $ 80 for a small item and $ 200 for a larger item). The drink menu has a mixologist touch… many include rums and juices and mine was even set on fire prior to being presented at the table.
3) Good for groups (although they do not take reservations «technically», I think if you give them a call for a group of 10+, they will do there best to help you out with their upper back dining area that probably seats around 20). The menu items are good for sharing and although the space of the restaurant does not really warrant groups, it would be good for a group… if they know you are coming. The staff seems cool like they want to help you out if they can… so call.
4) The mystery of the curbside décor seeming to be a chop/​stamp shop and not a restaurant adds a layer of fun to making a point to go eat and drink at Mrs. Pound. I will help you out if I am hoofing by on my way to the gym and walk by and see that you do not know how to get in, but life should have some surprises… I will not tell you how the mystery of the front door opens! Go and have some fun and figure it out for yourself!
5) The vibe of the design/​décor on the inside is like an American diner with a Chinese spin… pink walls, green walls, mid century modern touches, vinyl chairs.
Finally…if bullets 1 – 5 were not enough to get you remotely interested in going to Mrs. Pound, go because of bullet 5 below.
6) Dinyar Master is the new manager to Mrs. Pound. He is Indian, he is American, he is from here, he is from there, he is unrooted in pursuit of delivering hospitality, he has an international flair, he is charming, he is enthusiastic, upbeat and sincerely grateful that we came to have dinner. I know I might be singing the same tune with every review I write, but customer service can make it or break it for me. Dinyar Master has worked the globe in different facets of customer service in service giants like New Orleans to Midwest goodness like Minneapolis. Mrs. Pound is lucky to have him. The food was a 4, the drinks were a 4.5, the experience of customer service provided by Dinyar was a 5+ and the reason we will be back. He is a spirited soul that wants to raise the bar for his staff, for your experience and for the definition of Hong Kong hospitality with a little flair. Go pay him a visit!

Very nice people work there and run the place, they try to appeal to westerners but… Small lunch portions, food just not there. Cute and reasonably priced for lunch (don’t know about dinner) but I would try somewhere else for a good meal. So many cute and good restaurants in the area.

Service: Quick to help us sort out seats as we increased the number of people in our party. Helpful when we were also looking for an outlet to charge a cell phone. Good service in refilling drinks, taking our orders, and changing our plates as well. And breaking our change!
Food: Unique dishes. I especially liked the Sriracha and Cheese Corn. Their Wagyu fried rice was also really good! And yummy mango beer.
Overall: Would return!

There was a group of 10 of us so we ordered a bunch of dishes. Everything was delicious except for maybe the crab. It was messy and even though they give you gloves and a bib, it’s too much work for the little meat that came out of it. The other dishes are superb and I would ask the server for recommendations.
The entrance is a bit tricky and it took us about 5 minutes to figure it out. If you have arrived at the shop front of a stamp aka Chinese chop shop, you have arrived at the restaurant. Facing the many stamps, find the middle right side, next to the door, there is a little «stamp» that you press and the door will automatically slide open. Yes, it reminds me of those secret doors you find in haunted mansions. Very clever!

Stopped in for a quick bite for lunch and ended up sitting at the bar for a couple of hours. Food is good. Flavorful and creative. Recommend the Street Corn and the Double Fried Wings. Staff was friendly and welcoming. Wish I had time to try more of the dishes. Mac n Cheese Chili Crab and Rendang Poutine would definitely be next on the list.

Random visit on Monday night. The entrance was pretty tricky. Lychee spritzer (mocktail), quite refreshing. We ordered chicken skewer (min. 2), it was just average. The salt egg yolk calamari was very tasty, Cantonese style cooked, and good for beer. Followed by laksa bibimbap — our larger bite. Normal bibimbap served with hot clay pot, the highlight is the laksa sauce they served as opposed to the normal chilli paste. Staff is friendly and a very chic hang out place for drink and light dinner.

Be smart and get here early if you’re trying to come for dinner. It’s a speakeasy. Aka it’s tiny. Much like many other bars in Hong Kong. If you’re only coming here for the bar, expect a line or eat dinner here first and go barhopping later.
This place is pretty cool in my opinion — my best friend who lives in HK brought my boyfriend and I here on our last night before we returned back home. We came on a Friday night around 7:30 and we were seated immediately. I love the façade on the outside about the fake stamp shop and the Mrs. Pound story written on the placemats inside the restaurant.
As for the food itself, we ordered the hainan chicken (pretty good), curried french fries (yummy), bibimbap (hella spicy), and fried chicken wings (pretty delicious). We also ordered one alcoholic drink for myself and one non-​alcoholic drink for my best friend and tea for my boyfriend. My alcoholic drink was a little too weak for me.
Total came out to be roughly the equivalent of $ 80 USD — a little pricey but you’re there for the ambiance and the fun. Crowd is filled with expats but that makes sense — it’s also pretty close to Lan Kwai Fong.
As for the service — we had excellent service. Constant water refills, food that came out fast, and attentive waiters.

Ate here tonight. From what I’ve heard, if you have the corn, you love the place. If you don’t…
I didn’t have the corn.
It’s hipster. Service is slow. Prices are too high. (Bill was over $ 450 for two and we barely ate.)
When I pay over $ 150 for salted egg yolk shrimp, I: a– expect it to come less than 25 minutes after I order it, and b– expect there to be more than three pieces. (And c– I expect the tiny lime wedge that comes with to actually contain juice, not be just for show.) (And d– I expect it not to come with the shell still on, and if it does, for the shell to be so perfectly fried that I can crunch through it and enjoy eating it, not win a prize for most ugly eater as I try to negotiate getting it half-​chewed back out of my mouth with my chopsticks. And that’s not a fail because I’m Western.)
Bar was out of commission due to no alcohol license. Interior is cool and trendy and too loud.
Lamb skewers were delicious though. But between two of those (minimum order), a bowl of plain white rice ($ 20), the shrimp, and avocado fries, I felt like I’d barely had a first course.
I’m glad I went. I’m glad a nice lady who lives in Sheung Wan showed me how to get in. But I won’t be back unless it’s free. Up your game, Pound.

So, this is started by my fiancé’s fellow USC classmate. I really want to write a good review but…
First of all, service here is bad. I came twice, first during soft opening (in which I let the service slide) but second time I came which is half a year later, service is still terrible. Different people, but still bad. During soft opening, they claimed food wasn’t available, but when my fiancé said hello to the owner, the owner himself went to the kitchen and got the food for us himself. Food came out slow, but it’s soft opening, they always have things to fix. But my second visit, no change in service man, like come on…
So, the food is southeast asian fusion. Their rendang poutine is good, hainan chicken rice is lacking sufficient chicken, and the skewers are not comparable to yardbird. Try the menu, I just don’t find the need to go back to try the rest.
Then timeliness of food: very very slow. Service team really needs to up their game, but in the meantime I will most likely not be coming back. But I hope they fix this problem so they can continue to attract other customers.
I’m giving an extra star Bc it’s my fiancé’s friends place. Sorry.

I met a friend here for dinner on my last night in HK before returning to the US. We got there just before it got insanely crowded which is good since they don’t take reservations.
It’s a fun, trendy spot that was completely filled with expats by the time we left.
For eats, we had the eggplant skewers that were gloriously topped with a ton of buttery garlic, the sriracha butter corn on the cob (OMG!), the pomelo seafood salad and the bibimbap.
I am still thinking about that corn. Perfectly cooked, smothered in sriracha butter and topped with shreds of parmesan cheese. Seriously craveworthy.
The seafood salad was very refreshing and a lovely complement to the heavier bibimbap with chicken.
The cocktails sounded good but I opted for just a lime soda.
Haven’t ever heard of a restaurant speakeasy but if they’re all like Mrs. Pound, I’m cool with that.

Very underwhelming. I saw this in a recent article and decided to check it out.
Cool deco and location, staff was friendly enough. I was under the impression that it was Malaysian but they told me it was Asian fusion. Anytime I hear «fusion» I generally assume it means «our food is half rate at best, but we want to put lipstick on a pig.»
My intuition nailed it.
At over 100 each for a lunch set with no tea or coffee it’s over priced for this neighbourhood.
Salad was a tiny dish meant for a child and too sour.
The mains I tried were beef rendang and duck. Not bad but certainly not good.
Very mediocre dish at inflated prices. The hawkers of Singapore and Malaysia would be embarrassed.
Not worth it in my opinion and a long way to go.
Staff were courteous and the manager checked on us, which is why I give 2 stars otherwise on food it is just 1.

It is more like a hipster place than a nice restaurant. Food is average, totally overprice. Service was bad, i dont need ppl to keep reminding me there is no service charge. One time only place.

Really cool place with great concept, but not completely sold on some items. Hopefully after the soft opening, they can execute the dishes perfectly.
Also — was standing outside for a while before I realised how the hell to get in (not telling ahem!). No reservations unless you’re a large party, so you might be waiting to be seated or be seated bar-​side like us.
At the moment, Mrs Pound only serves two varieties of HK microbrews, and some mocktails. The lemongrass iced tea just tasted like lemon iced tea, which was not too much of a disappointment tbh.
The laksa bibimbap is essentially a nice crispy Indonesian fried rice, or nasi goreng. I wouldn’t call it the «best bibimbap» because it doesn’t taste even slightly like a Korean bibimbap. Rather, it looks Korean with the constituent parts, and is mixed table-​side like a bit of a show.
We loved the two salted egg yolk king prawns — these are truly KING prawns, so you get a generous amount of meat and they don’t short you with the head and salted egg.
The rendang poutine was a good attempt at fusing the sloppy Canadian favourite with some melt-​in-​your-​mouth Indonesian beef, but the textures were — as you might imagine — kind of one-​dimensional.
Only big issue was the Xinjiang spice mix they’re using. For some reason, instead of the base flavour of cumin that one would expect, I was consistently overwhelmed by cinnamon. This was seen in the ‘ma la’ double fried chicken wings, which were more sickly sweet than anything else, and I would not order again…
The Xinjiang lamb skewers had a lot of fatty, musky cuts of lamb masked with this cinnamon spice mix too. It also took nearly 25 minutes for this last dish to be served to us, and we ultimately regretted waiting so long.
I would be excited to come here when Mrs Pound is settled, to see how they’ve remedied some of these small details.

Oh Mrs. Pound, you are a tempting seductress. So hard to obtain, and yet so welcoming. You lure me in with the promise of exotic corn, satisfy me with gourmet street-​food, and then deliver the coup-​de-​grace with the best bibimbap I have had in my life. Your bloody mary (even though it was virgin) was to die for. But most of all, it was the warm personal touches of the staff, the carefully-​served delicacies, the kind recommendations, and the effort they made so that everything was just _​right_​. You even kept your calm, cool demeanour when that obnoxious English woman was giving you aggro over the lack of a table (what did she expect showing up on a Friday after the first sitting?) Oh, Mrs. Pound, I want to keep you all to myself, but it would be selfish not to encourage others to sample your abundant charms. There is heaven to be had on Pound Lane, if one knows which stone to turn over.