Hong Kong Tea House

This shop is located at quite a large white building just beside Katong Mall. The interior of the shop gives a very old school feeling with pictures of people from the 70s or so. I didn’t think the environment suited the “hong kong” style very much, you know the kind where they have those couches and stools around round tables. Ok obviously I’ve watched too much tv. Nonetheless, it was not too bad a place. Plain and simple.

Initially, I thought that this place had quite poor service as the staffs seemed quite unfriendly and had this whole I-can’t-care-less attitude. But I changed my opinion about them after an incident.

I ordered a sour plum drink. From the picture on the menu, I thought it would purely be sour plum with soda water or non-carbonated water. However, when the drink was served, I was shocked that it had this herbal medicine taste in it and didn’t like the drink at all. I called for the waitress to clarify with her if they made any mistakes in my order or if I made a mistake myself, and surprisingly, when the waitress heard that I didn’t like my drink, she offered to change the drink for me without hesitation. Such service is something you don’t see in most places in Singapore, especially when the reason for a change was because I didn’t like the drink.

I also tried their Mapo tofu. It was both spicy and sweet, but I really liked it as the taste doesn’t clash and the tofu was not too soft. It was easy to pick up and it had a very soft texture in your mouth that stayed there for awhile, and not melt before you even get to taste it. It did not have a very strong taste as though a lot of MSG was added in either. Plus, it looked good! I think presentation of food is important as it makes it look more appetizing (though of course it’s until you’ve tasted it then do you know whether it’s nice or not.)

All was good, but the baked rice with fish fillet was kind of below expectations. I felt that there weren’t enough cheese and the fish fillet was really tough and hard to chew. However, there definitely are many more popular recommended dishes that I didn’t get a chance to try in a day. Thus, this place should not be judged just because of this dish.

After a meal, there’s always the DESSERT! Try their dessert! The famous hong kong Yang Zhi Gan Lu (kind of like mango sago dessert, but it has pomelo bits too.) tastes really good with the smooth mango juice base and sweet mango cubes and pomelo bits. It tastes much better than one that I tried in hong kong before!

Worth a try!