Tien Heung Lau Restaurant

This onetime institutional establishment of Shanghai (or more precisely, Hangzhou) cuisine back in the ‘90s-‘00s is now Way Overpriced & so Passé.
The restaurant charged HK$ 1200 for a 260g hairy crab but the quality didn’t show. The rest of the dishes are not as good as other newer counterparts either.
The décor basically stayed unchanged during the past 2 decades & is now so worn & outdated.
If it wasn’t for the 30 year old Xiao-​shing yellow wine, I’d only give the place 1 star. Will not visit again.

First of all, this is the only Hangzhou cuisine restaurant outside of China I am aware of. I am American and lived in Hong Kong for almost 10 years (’79-’88) about 200 meters from Tien Heung Lau. However that is not how I found it… it was my chinese boss who took me there before I even moved there. The food was amazing and unique… but he did experience a problem. When he was ordering (in Cantonese which at the time I did not speak until years later so had no idea what they were saying) he asked for specials (not knowing this place’s reputation as he had never been there before) and wound up ordering a large bowl of shark skin soup as one of the dishes. We laughed about it as he/​I/​his wife had never heard of it before. It had a world class imperial broth but only a few scattered veggies/​small shrimp and a lot of thick pieces of shark skin which were not chewable or edible. It was a complete waste. The rest of the meal was world class. When he got the bill he flipped out and was so pissed off… the lousy bowl of soup was HK$ 1600 (US$ 200 in 1979). The lesson was always ask for the price of specials at Tien Heung Lau. Their reputation is constant amazing one of a kind specials… at outrageous prices fit for the HK elite business class. It is a tiny restaurant with 4 or 6 tables so not difficult to keep full with the rich. years later I read an article in the south china morning post about what a great restaurant it was… but look out for the exotic specials… going in to detail about how exotic and expensive these specials are and beware. I laughed so hard remembering how pissed off my boss was in 1979. I ate there many times over the years with wife/​friends and we always loved it. It was expensive but not unreasonable if you stayed with regular menu items. The Beggar’s chicken was better than all other places; their noodles with fava beans/​pork is mindboggling, when in season they make gau choi fa chau sing ji (chives with their flowers sauteed with bi-​valve clams) in a rich brown sauce (hoisin/​oyster/​etc combo) to die for. I moved back to HK for a year of work in 1993 but the place was closed. No sign in the front with explanation, no nothing. Then christmas 2004 while working in Manila we went to HK for a renunion with old friends; one day I walked by and saw someone inside. Could not believe it… it was one of the waiters from 20 years before… and he remembered me because I ate there many times and spoke Cantonese which is so rare. He explained that the family patriarch died and no one in the family wanted to continue with the business. So the place sat empty for years (they must have owned the building??). Then at some point a few years earlier they decided to start it up again and were back in business. So we made a reservation and had a reunion meal like the old days in 1979. The food was the same and it was wonderful. It is not for everyone/​all tastes… but if you are a chinese food aficionado/​gourmet then this place will thrill you like many others in HK. Just don’t expect the food to be anything like you are familiar with.