I ate at Hong Kong's 'cafeteria for the wealthy,' where the city's rich and famous hobnob over flawless Cantonese food
In 1972, Fook Lam Moon opened in Wan Chai, Hong Kong's red-light district sandwiched between Central, the city's main business district, and The Peak, a neighborhood that has been synonymous with wealth, luxury, and exclusivity since the colonial era. The brand actually dates back to 1948, when Chui Fook Chuen founded a gourmet catering service for a similarly high-end clientele.
On the night I visited — a Friday during Art Basel Hong Kong — the restaurant was conspicuously quiet. I saw no ultra-luxury cars. But when I arrived, I was greeted downstairs by a hostess who took me into the elevator and guided me to one of the restaurant's dining rooms.
The decor is classic, in a 1960s, golden age of Hong Kong sort of way. The dining room is decorated in browns, gold, and jade green. Glass cabinets show off Cantonese delicacies and top shelf bottles of champagne and cognac. Even with the dining room only half full, there is a rarefied air to the place.
A look at the menu confirms the feeling. One of the top delicacies, braised shark's fin in cream of crab roe, sells for nearly $200 per person. Simpler dishes, like the restaurant's much-heralded appetizer of char-grilled pork "char sui" goes for $37.
Source: South China Morning Post
The restaurant is well-known for the lavish banquets thrown by Hong Kong and Chinese businessmen for their potential partners. When the economy is good, Fook Lam Moon is booming. "Fook Lam Moon's performance has always been tied to the wider macroeconomic conditions and movements in the Hang Seng Index," Duncan Chui Tak-keung, the third-generation of Chui to run the restaurant, told South China Morning Post in 2014.
Source: South China Morning Post
I was invited to try Fook Lam Moon at the invitation of the Hong Kong Tourism Board, which had a 10-course tasting menu prepared to give me some sense of the breadth of dishes available.
Surprising given its high-end Asian clientele, Fook Lam Moon doesn't have a premium tea menu, according to Hong Kong Tatler. I ordered a green tea-Chrysanthemum tea mix. Like the restaurant itself, the tea was understated yet high-quality.
Source: Hong Kong Tatler
The meal started with the restaurant's famous crispy pork belly and pork "char sui." I've had this dish all over New York's Chinatowns. This was the best I'd ever had.
The skin was crispy, crackling with layers of fat keeping the lean meat below juicy. The meat had a light glaze of sweetness and avoided being overly salty. The mustard and honey sauce served with it both illuminated the tender meat in different ways — the honey bringing out its natural sweetness, while the bite of the mustard cut the dish's richness.
Serving the pork with the classic cold appetizer of wood ear mushrooms in black vinegar sauce was brilliant. The cool, slightly sweet tangy vinegar and the springy mushrooms acted as a palate cleanser and a strong contrast.
Next, I had an assorted seafood, minced pork, and bean curd (tofu) soup. The soup was thick and exemplified two main characteristics of Cantonese cooking — light, subtle flavors and an emphasis on seafood. The soup was thick and delicately flavored.
While the broth was thick, the soup was a mixture of contrasting flavors and textures. The chopped-up tofu throughout the soup had absorbed much of the broth, giving it a silken texture and ensuring that every spoonful contained bits of meat and vegetables.
Scallops, shrimp, tofu, and mushrooms were the stars, but chopped tomatoes and spring onion brought pockets of brightness while the chewiness of the minced pork balanced the delicate texture of the soup.
The service at Fook Lam Moon was impeccable. Waiters and waitresses refilled your tea as you finished your glass and the table was reset just as you finished a course. But the service never feels fussy or overbearing. They appear and disappear with lightning speed.
There seemed to be a lot of thought put into the ordering of the dishes so as to create a build in momentum. This baked crab shell was stuffed with fresh crab meat and onions and then topped with seasoned breadcrumbs.
The dish is deceptively simple, using meat from freshly shucked local flower crabs. The breadcrumbs have been fried and then baked, giving it a soft crunch. It's like an ultra-luxurious version of a crab cake, but you feel less guilty since it's mostly crab meat instead of breadcrumbs.
If there is one fault with this dish, it is that the onions threaten to overpower the flavor. Varying the stuffing with some other diced vegetables would balance it.
The timing at the restaurant was perfect. Fook Lam Moon is truly a well-oiled machine. As soon as you finish one dish, there is only a moment's wait before the next comes out. At the same time, you never feel rushed. It almost feels like the staff is eyeing your progress and passing that information back to the kitchen.
The star of the night, and Fook Lam Moon's most famous dish, was the famous crispy chicken. This is one of my favorite Cantonese dishes and one of the hardest to execute well. Spoiler alert: Fook Lam Moon's was excellent.
The greatest difficulty with the Cantonese crispy chicken dish is how to make the paper-thin skin of the chicken crispy without drying out the meat. Most restaurants get one or the other right. The skin is crispy but the meat is dry, or the skin is soft but the meat is juicy.
Fook Lam Moon expertly managed to get both right. The meat was juicy without being greasy and the skin was so crispy that it resembled that of duck skin.
Even as I was approaching peak fullness — and knowing I had a few more dishes to go — I kept picking at this dish. It was too good to waste.
The sauteed seasonal vegetables with crab roe was a come-down after the crispy chicken. The asparagus was crunchy and al-dente (overcooked asparagus is awful) and large enough to pick up the delicate roe. The blandness of the asparagus played well off the umami flavor of the roe, which had a rich, almost-soup broth fullness to it.
It was clear that I had only scratched the surface of the delicacies the restaurant had to offer. Other tables were serving shark fin soup (I avoid this for environmental reasons), abalone, and others. The fish tanks were filled with large, colorful fish. When my dining partner asked a waitress if they were for sale, the waitress laughed, "Of course they are for sale. We are not an aquarium." Some fish at the restaurant sell for more than $800.
Source: South China Morning Post
I finished dinner with a serving of fried rice with pork and shrimp. While the rice wasn't as adventurous or innovative as a recent bowl I had in Macau with Wagyu beef, the dish was classic Cantonese. Plump shrimp, tender pieces of char sui, and rice that gets its flavor from the surrounding ingredients rather than oil. It certainly wasn't a standout, but anyone hankering for real fried rice wouldn't be disappointed.
I always find that Chinese dessert leaves something left to be desired. It's usually more of a palate cleanser than anything else. The two desserts I had —a fluffy brown sugar sponge cake and a red bean glutinous rice dumpling wrapped in lotus leaf — were quintessential Chinese desserts. Sweet, but not too sweet.
The sponge cake was buttery and fluffy, if a little bland. But as a cap on a long and flavor-filled meal, it did the trick.
The red bean glutinous rice dumpling was a dish I've never had. It was chewy, delicate, and warm with a light sweetness from the red beans.
My dining partner, who is Chinese-American, had this to say of the dish: "I usually will only eat this when my grandma makes it. It's never right otherwise. This was perfect."
All in all, Fook Lam Moon's reputation as serving classic, flavorful, expertly crafted food lived up to the hype. The atmosphere did not. Perhaps it was an off night, but it lacked the hustle and bustle and glamour of a place nicknamed "the cafeteria of the wealthy." Maybe the stars were hidden away in private rooms or, perhaps, they've moved onto brighter galaxies.
Address: Newman House, 35-45 Johnston Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong
Cost for two: Approximately $83 (HK$650) without drinks or tip
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