January 7, 2016
9-11 Fuk Wing Street, Sham Shui Po
(10 min walk from Sham Shui Po MTR
Other branches:
Shop 12A, HongKong Station (Podium Level 1, IFC Mall),
Central
Shop B,C & D, G/F, 2-8 Wharf Road, Seaview Building,
North Point
Tim Ho Wan is a Cinderella story, the hole-in-the-wall dim
sum restaurant that scored One Michelin Star, thereby earning its reputation as
the “cheapest Michelin Star restaurant in the world”. Fame found its way.
The two-hour queues at Tim Ho Wan could make the most
patient among us feel slightly crazed. Even the woman manning the counter is
agitated; hastily scrawling a number on a yellow Post-it note and shoving it
unceremoniously into my hand.
This is the moment I'm expected to leave, but I linger, timidly inquiring how long the wait will be. Big mistake.
"One hour!" she barks, squawking something in
Cantonese into a tiny microphone attached to the register.
I edge outside, mystified. It's hard to believe I've just
made a reservation at a Michelin-starred restaurant. It felt more like dropping
off a shirt at the dry cleaners. The
unseasonably chilly day in Hong Kong has shrouded the city with drizzle, and
outside, some 40 people huddle around the entrance, clustered together like
excited teenagers at the gates of a music festival, their chatter punctuated by
the revving engines of motorcyclists and taxis.
Passers-by seem bemused as they weave past. From the outside,
Tim Ho Wan looks like any other nondescript dim sum canteen in the city's
traffic-choked Mong Kok district. But there is one marked difference: Michelin
reviewers have awarded it a coveted one-star rating, netting it the auspicious
title of cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant in the world.
Baskets of prawn dumplings and pork buns cost a mere 80p – a
long way from the eye-watering £250 bills that can be clocked up at other
Michelin-starred restaurants such as the Fat Duck or El Bulli. It's a rare chance
for layfolk to sample cuisine usually reserved for the upper echelons of
society.
The man behind Tim Ho Wan is Mak Pui Gor, the former dim sum
master at Hong Kong's Four Seasons Hotel. Pui Gor worked at the hotel's
three-starred restaurant Lung King Heen before going it alone, and despite the
newly anointed star rating, he's not raising the prices, meaning Tim Ho Wan is
now Hong Kong's hottest meal ticket. But if you want to eat here, take a number
and stand in line. For a very long time.
I'd been waiting at least an hour already, with a
distressingly numbered Post-it note of 252. The last number squawked out in
Cantonese was 90. A young, bespectacled couple standing next to me giggled when
they heard me groan. They'd been waiting an hour and a half already, the girl
explained shyly, twirling her pink-and-white scarf with her fingers.
Half an hour later, gnawing hunger and obsessive thoughts of
succulent pork buns turn into grumpiness. Is it worth it? It seems like idiocy
to wait this long, but there's a wonton-sized shred of hope every 15 minutes:
the shrill voice, the rustling sound of people checking their numbers and one
lucky patron pushing their way through Heaven's Gates, leaving their hungry
comrades behind. Hunger throws discretion out the window. Some of the queuers
press their faces against the glass doors, ogling at poor diners trying to
stuff slippery prawn dumplings into their mouths. Others give up hope. One
Chinese man caused a minor sensation when he shuffled off, only to rejoin the
queue minutes later, chewing on satay chicken skewers bought from a starless
restaurant down the road.
I faint with hunger by the time my number was called 45
minutes later. I handed the waitress a paper menu with my dish choices circled
in pen, and were seated elbow to elbow at a long table crammed with other
diners, the clatter of the kitchen to our backs.
No one talked – all too hungry and fixated on the food, a
steady stream of baskets served stacked atop each other, along with a
constant flow of tea from China's Yunnan province, known as pu-erh.
The first dish served was Tim Ho Wan's pièce de résistance,
Cha siu baau (pork buns), which sell like hot cakes here (around 750 a day).
They are "worth dying for" according to one of our fellow diners.
They're usually served steamed, but here they are fried: the ever-so-slightly crisp
sugar glaze around the pastry bun yielding to a decadent mixture of diced pork
and sauce. The succulent beef meatballs, infused with dried mandarin and spring
onions, could also be worth dying for. As could the wobbly turnip cakes, the
prawn dumplings wrapped in delicate, translucent pastry, or the dessert – a
jasmine tea jelly suffused with a type of flower petal.
"124 HKD," squawked the lady at the counter.
A wonton-sized price for a princely, Michelin-starred feast. Be back on my
next stop over from UK.
