It’s always a treat to eat at Hong Kong’s Lung King Heen restaurant, one of the finest cantonese restaurants probably anywhere in the world. Although I’ve had plenty of equally satisfying cantonese meals elsewhere, especially for cheaper if you factor in the premium Michelin 3-star pricing at Lung King Heen, I don’t think any of the others equal in terms of how elegant the cooking actually is. Much of this is reflected in the sauces which just seem very fine at Lung King Heen.
The restaurant, which is at the Four Seasons Hotel, offers a set menu – I guess the equivalent of a degustation menu – that I would describe as being catered to tourists or visitors who are not that familiar with Chinese food. Generally, I’d recommend ordering from the a la carte menu. Many of the dishes are good but I always order the signature crispy skin roast chicken and the fried rice, which is probably like ordering duck confit in a fancy french restaurant, but they do these standard dishes so well.
Our meal started with some champagne or sparkling wine. It’s such a civilised start! Lung Hing Keen has a nice view of the harbour with the Kowloon skyline and this creates a very pleasant back drop to the restaurant. Obviously the cost of eating at Lung King Heen includes the great view and the space between diners. This is not your standard loud and crowded Chinese restaurant.
We ordered some roast meat cuts to start with – in this case comprising of roast duck, roast piglet and barbecue roast pork. The duck and piglet were excellent. The former was very tender and the latter, nicely crispy. Lung King Heen offers a selection of condiments to accompany the whole meal and the XO sauce was just super. Besides the fried shallots, they use preserved Chinese olives in their sauce – so it’s meat free and not done using the standard prawns and dried scallops. This is to cater to vegetarians and others with shellfish allergies. It was a great to have this with the fried rice.
We also had a plate of century eggs, pictured above, which Lung King Heen specially makes. The best century eggs are still only found in Hong Kong. With food safety scares since century eggs may be preserved in toxic chemicals, this would probably be one of the safest places to have these. Following the appetiser we had one of the seasonal specialties, a nice broth containing sea cucumber, snow fungus and mushrooms.
As we weren’t that hungry and to be honest, didn’t want to rack up the bill too much, my husband and I shared a few of the dishes. The restaurant was nice enough to divide up the single portion into two for us – as in the case of the soup and the fish maw below. Given that the single portions are a decent size, this was still adequate for us.
I only eat fish maw as a rare treat due to the high cost. Half our bill for the evening consisted of this single dish. So about once or year or even longer, when I visit Lung King Heen, I’ll order the fresh fish maw which they braise in a choice of two sauces: abalone or chicken. I prefer the chicken. In both cases the gravy is supremely tasty because of quantum of chicken or abalone that is slow cooked to produce the stock.
The crispy skinned chicken at Lung King Heen is one of my favourites. The reason is as much for the tenderness of the chicken as it is for the evenly roasted skin. This dish is just so well cooked. In some other restaurants the chicken is just not as smooth or the skin is not as evenly crispy. We had half a chicken – the smallest order for this particular dish. The chicken is accompanied by deep fried lotus roots and basil leaves and excellent to have with the fried rice. We usually ask the restaurant to bring out the fried rice with the chicken. Such good comfort food!
Okay, the so called standard fried rice is jazzed up a bit at Lung King Heen. While there are the normal choices of fried rice, the lobster fried rice with the dollop of XO sauce is to die for. This is one great reason to skip the low carb diet for the night.
We rounded out our meal with a “vegetable” dish which in this case was a variety of braised mushrooms, bamboo pith and kai lan. This was very good on its own but because we had mushrooms in our soup, I felt that we could have done better with something else.
It was a lot of food for two people – always a case of greed. I didn’t have dessert but my husband had his usual almond cream that I didn’t photograph (it looks like an off-white soup). But knowing that I couldn’t have dessert, the restaurant left us with some nice egg custard pastries and osmanthus jelly. The latter is my favourite Chinese restaurant petit four.
There are other numerous choices of dishes at Lung King Heen that I haven’t gotten around to trying (I’m always ordering the same things) but I’ve had their dim sum, which I also highly recommend. Dim sum is served at lunch and like my dinner experience, the food is very fine with delicate dumpling skin and baked pastries. I also got them to do a wonton mee (noodles) for me a couple of times (not on the menu). Also very good but not necessarily better than the specialty won ton restaurants in Hong Kong such as Mak’s Noodles.
Lung King Heen is located on the fourth floor of the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong. Bookings can be made online at the website. The restaurant is open daily and reservations are recommended.