Mott 32

I was born and raised in Hong Kong and have spent over two decades eating everywhere, but seriously… BEST. PORK. BUN. EVER.
This is one of the first stops I make every time I go home for vacation.
The Iberico pork bun is literally my favorite bun in the world — I’ve ventured to try similar buns at different restaurants around the world, and this is still my favorite.
The décor is beautiful — tucked away in a basement, Mott32 is a classy rendition of the traditional Hong Kong dim sum restaurant. Incorporating traditional look & feel of the roasted poultry hanging from the kitchen, as well as street art on the walls into a five-​star restaurant.
The dim sum here is unbeatable — but so is the peking duck. The Peking duck is served delicately, separated into three dishes — the crispy skin and fat, the medium lean, and the dark meat, each with its own dipping sauce.
If you’re visiting Hong Kong, I recommend this as one of your food adventure destinations!

Dim yet strategic lighting creates an intimate ambience where you can still see your food. Brightly lit chefs station where you can watch food prep. and think, I should have pre-​ordered the suckling pig as well as the peking duck. Knowledgeable staff were able to explain dishes well and provide appropriate recommendations (quantity and accompaniments). The fried fish balls were too dry and needed a sauce. The duck was delectable. We had both courses — pancakes and san choi bau. Rich depth of flavour and about the thinnest pancakes ever. Green beans with mince even won over the anti veggie boys. Loved the bitter, tart, sweet, crunchy deconstructed matcha cheesecake.

We tried many dishes, everything was great. BBQ pork was good but too fatty for my taste. Sui mai was amazing. Lobster shrimp dumpling had a giant piece of lobster in there. Fried kale was amazing, think it’s because of the shrimp paste, which has different kinds of flavorful dried seafood. Everything else was really good too. This is the place on my restaurant list now.

It’s easy to spend a lot at Mott 32 but you can just as easily have a good meal and a glass of wine for under US$ 100.
The restaurant is well hidden, located deep in the bowels of the Stanchart building. It’s impressive how spacious the restaurant is. The cool dungeon look is versatile, just as good for business dinners as it is for a group of friends as it is for a romantic dinner for two.
You MUST order the Iberico Pork Char Siew. Pre-​order this dish when you make your reservation because they have been known to pull the «I’m afraid it’s sold out trick» as early as 7.30pm on a weekday. If you’ve forgotten to take my advice to pre-​order and you find this happens to you, just insist on the char siew and somehow they will miraculously find one in the kitchen.
The Iberico Pork Char Siew is the best char siew in Hong Kong and I say this without exaggeration. Ho Lee Fook is #2. These two places beat the locals at their own game. Unfortunately the other dishes at Mott 32 are not as impressive. 5-​stars for the char siew, 3-​stars for all other dishes, 5-​stars for ambience.

Five stars Chinese cuisine! thank you for the wonderful dining experience.

Outstanding. Fresh ingredients and, most importantly, a new concept of Cantonese cuisine makes this an important step forward. And a big eye-​opener for New York foodies traveling in Asia. Excellent and attentive service as well.

Wow! All i can say is the service is impeccable and the food is almost as good as it gets anywhere. You have to call in and reserve the 48 hour smoked peking duck beforehand but it was I think the best peking duck i’ve ever had in my life. The décor and ambiance of this restaurant is awesome and the bartenders know how to mix them drinks proper. Props to you Mr. Xuan Mu, you have a fine dining establishment here. Very well put together restaurant and team

Mott 32 food is just ok. It’s over priced Chinese food.
But you don’t come for food quality here. You come to be at a trendy place.
What is cool about Mott 32 is the drama in the set up. The location is in the basement of the Stan Chart building. The drama of going down 3 escalators and the pretty hostesses that, if they feel like it, and smile at you, makes you feel welcomed.
The service is chaotic, especially if you sit away from the center, so the further you sit from the bar the service becomes uneven.
I totally recommend coming here for a drink and then hopping over to Soho and going to one of those sweet fun quaint restaurants.
You get the best of both worlds.
A great place to start a night.

I like the drinks at this place. My two favorites: Joe’s Elixir and Hong Kong Iced Tea. My fiancé likes whiskey so he likes the Old Fashioned here.
The food is good too, but I would say it is on the pricier side, and I think it’s a bit oily too. But that’s typical of Chinese food I think. You need to pre-​order the duck and Iberico ham because they run out quite fast. I really like the Iberico ham char siu. That’s a definite must to order. The duck is actually only so-​so, but it’s a nice place to show friends from out of town, so I just usually take them here because it comes with cool drinks too. Then, I like the eggplants or green beans for vegetables. And then my fiancé likes the chicken with chili spices wok fried. I think you can’t go wrong with the choices of food, because I’ve tried quite a bit of the menu and most of them are quite tasty (and oily). Dessert is surprisingly not bad also. All the food is like Chinese fusion, so maybe that’s why I like it (but they don’t have the panda express orange chicken which I really miss from LA) haha

God mum day off and we went to a nice restaurant again in Central, this one i heard for long time but always full booking during lunch hour; probably after some festivals in CNY and people prefer eat light; then we’re lucky to get the seat.
Nice, an old traditional deluxe chinese restaurant with some old english songs club music playing with tasting some delicious food that was fascinating! We took lot of time to mull over the attractive options on the menu and admiring the stylish décor, finally we can order after an half hour. haha.
Must try — 1) Signature dishes; BBQ prime lberico pork (Char Siu) with mountain honey; definitely love it of it was soft but a bit of crispy with sweet coating. 2) Siu mai, soft quail egg, black truffle, but had to be eaten quickly before the quail egg york got cooked. It was delicious with creamy. By the way the washroom is really cool, but it was very dark in the restaurant. Once again, i love this restaurant and even a lot of nice one in Central. Enjoyed.

I’ve been to mott32 for lunch and dim sum. Each time I try new dishes and am amazed on how consistently wow it is. At most restaurants that I return to and eat different dishes only to be disappointed, realizing that I had already has all their best. This is not the case at mott32. They have created a menu with so many options that I am sure to continue going until I try each dish, and then I will return to repeat the cycle all over again.

I would say Mott 32 is a safe choice to bring your foreigner friends/​tourists because their dish were modified to suit westerners’ tastes.
Let’s talk about the environment and the decorations. It looks exactly like one of those glamorous, mysterious Chinese restaurant you saw in Hollywood blockbusters except the servers here in mott 32 aren’t wearing skin tight Qipao and secretly know kung fu and will cut your head off with chopsticks.
The names of the foods are really luxurious. Their names are literally the combination of the origin of the ingredients plus adjectives describing the texture of the food e. g Crispy Sugar Coated BBQ Spanish Teruel Pork Bun. Talk about originality, hah. It almost seems like Mott 32 is trying to tell you why they are charging you that much for a pork bun and Siu Mai. I am not saying that it’s wrong or bad, it’s just a bit… pretentious (?)for a dim sum name. To be fair I think their menu might be great if you like tongue twisters.
For the pork bun, I think it’s delicious. It’s really crispy on top and the bun is hot. The pork/​char siu tastes really good and juicy. The best part of it was that you can smell a strong scent of oyster sauce in the bun, one of my favorite smells in the world. (Oh trust me, it’s addictive) The portion was a bit smaller than I expected though.
The Siu Mai is alright, the scallop on top of the Siu Mai really compliments the dish and makes it lux. The Siu Mai skin didn’t fell off or tangled around the Siu Mai, which is a pass for me and also indicate that they steamed it at just the right amount of time.
The Caviar Crab Xiao Long Bao is a hit or miss I think. My friend likes it yet I think the caviar is a bit redundant for Xiao Long Bao. I’d rather eat those two separately. I can’t taste any crab meat in the Xiao Long Bao either… It wasn’t bad at all yet it surely doesn’t worth any compliments.
The egg white dried scallop fried rice is good. The entire presentation makes drool. Each rice is coated with the perfect amount of oil that makes it shine yet won’t make it too oily when you taste it. There’s a generous amount of dried scallops which I appreciated (coz it is not cheap at all).
I had the crispy shrimp steamed rice roll as well. It’s really good and it’s a must try for tourists. However, this dish can be seen everywhere in Hong Kong due to its popularity among tourists I guess. You can even have the exact same dish with a much much cheaper price in Hong Kong. *wink*

Arriving at Mott 32 is like entering a James Bond film, especially if you come at night when the streets outside are quiet and dark. Housed in the Standard Chartered Bank building, you need to walk through the foyer under the watchful gaze of giant statues before you arrive at a desk manned by a lone hostess. It’s all a bit eery and when she welcomes you may feel as if you need to provide some secret code to gain access to the main event.
«Follow me» she will say, and you’ll step on to a big escalator that will take you down underground and deposit you at the top of a gigantic spiralling staircase that is surrounded by shiny surfaces and decorations. You might feel like you’re in an Escher painting as you take step after step in to what you are convinced is some mysterious dungeon.
Eventually you find yourself in the restaurant itself and the glamorous chandeliers, giant vases of flowers and ambient music puts your mind at ease. Not a torture room after-​all, but a dark and sexy setting for a decadent meal!
—–
The food at Mott 32 is high-​end Chinese. The Peking duck must be ordered in advance and comprises three cuts of the duck, three sauces, cucumber and shallot and what feels like a never ending basket of pancakes to wrap it all up in. Luckily for me, my dining companion rang ahead to order it and so it was that I found myself eating more duck in a sitting than is probably healthy (pro tip: this dish is better suited to larger groups). The dumpling with pork, quail egg and truffle was excellent. The gooey egg inside was really clever but I didn’t understand the accompanying hot and numbing sauce as it overpowered the delicate truffle.
The cocktails at Mott 32 are innovative and feature Chinese flavours like chrysanthemum and Szechuan chilli. The wine list is impressive, with a good selection by the glass and a huge bottle list which means there’s something to suit most tastes and budgets.
My only criticism of Mott 32 is in relation to the service. It wasn’t bad, but rather too attentive and over the top. Being asked time and time again how things were and if we wanted anything when we were clearly deep in conversation became a bit annoying.

Mott 32 is located inside the basement of the standard chartered building in central, Hong Kong. Because of recent occupy central protesting, the main entrance was blocked off and we had to enter through another doorway which was quite exciting.
I’ve heard a lot about this restaurant so for my grandmas weekly night out with us I decided to take her on a Chinese fusion trip with me to Mott 32. It was very rewarding to watch her experience a completely different type of restaurant than she’s used to. We both had a gear experience.
Ambiance, I give them give starts. The seating is quite comfortable, dim lighting with beautiful hanging low lights for a good dinner atmosphere. It was spaced out and had a cool room with Chinese calligraphy brushes hanging on the walls. We didn’t sit in that room but it looked like an interesting room to be in.
The food was spectacular. Asian fusion at its best. The char siu (barbecue pork) was amazing. Half fatty and half lean. Melts in your mouth with perfect flavouring. We also indulged a bit and got the birds best soup salt version. My grandma absolutely loved this but it was quite pricey for what it was. Minus the price I would give that a five star. We got the steamed egg with wine sauce crab claw. It’s petite and beautifully presented. Tasted very yummy indeed. Next we also had the bitter melon vegetables with tofu skin braised in fish soup. Being a bitter melon fan I love this however my grandma not so much. We also got string beans which was a mouthful of robust flavours that dances around your mouth beautifully.
Overall Mott 32 exceeded our expectations and sets a whole new bar of Chinese fusion restaurants in Hong Kong. I definitely recommend this restaurant!

Mott 32 is located at the basement of Standard Chartered Bank HQ. After going down quite a few flights of stairs, we stepped into a place with décor resemble a bank vault (I am not sure if this place used to be a bank vault or not but it sure gives out that kind of vibe). With lots of copper metal hues and dim lighting, it definitely look different from most of the Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong.
Serving mainly classic Cantonese cuisine with a twist, Mott 32 offers dim sum and a la carte dishes for lunch and a more elaborate menu for dinner. Me and my friends were there for lunch this time and we ordered a mixture of dim sum and a la carte dishes.
One of their signature dishes is the roasted Peking duck (do prepare to wait 30 minutes upwards as it is made to order). The duck was served «PRC» style in 3 ways: First they cut out the skin with the fattest part and eat it with sugar, then you get the rest of the fatty skin with meat and meat only which you wrap inside wafer thin pancakes with cucumber, green onion and seafood (a sweet) sauce. The duck was very well cooked (the twist being roasted with apple-​wood chips although honestly I cannot taste the effect) with crispy skin and succulent meat. Pancakes were also fluffy and thin. Highly recommended for sharing between 3 – 4 people.
Another featured items are their Char Siu (BBQ Pork). Choose from either Japanese Kurabuto pork or Spanish Iberico pork, this is some of the most expensive Char Siu you can buy. Since they ran out of the Iberico version, that left us with the slightly cheaper choice. Juicy and soft, the pork was perfectly cooked which complemented the quality of the meat. Highly recommended.
Then came the various dim sum:
Siu Mai (pork dumplings) made with Japanese pork, quail eggs topped with a truffle sauce was a surprisingly tasty mix of texture and taste.
Har Gaw (shrimp dumplings) tasted good but nothing spacial. For the price, I expect a lot more.
Xiao Long Bao (soup dumplings) with crab meat and caviar was a little disappointing. Lack both in taste and soup inside the dumpling made it a failure in my book.
Vegetable dumplings was the best of the lot, adding water chestnut to the filling elevated the taste to a whole new level.
By this time, me and my friends were pretty full and therefore skipped dessert. There are other dim sum such as fried taro cake with chicken and shrimp, steamed rice noodle rolls with crunch shrimp filling, fried wagyu beef turnip dumpling etc. Will definitely visit again and try them out.
I like Mott 32 a lot, they use premium quality ingredients but yet stay true to classic Chinese cooking (none of that «fusion» turning into «confusion» nonsense). Pricey for sure but worth a splurge from time to time.