Tak Lung Restaurant

A old one and little small door and window but the task is very decent, service person are very friendly. recommend if u looking for local taste.

Old style local Hong Kong dishes .
Many dishes you can’t find in other restaurant.
The price not cheap compare with other same style restaurant. But the food quality and quantity is fair to the price. It is suggested have a family gathering in here, you can try more different dishes.

I had a friend visiting this week so wanted to take her to an authentic Cantonese restaurant and this was recommended. Of course there was sweet and sour pork which this restaurant is «famous» for and it did not disappoint (being one of my favourite Cantonese dishes ever!). There were some surprises with the pomelo skin dish — lovely flavour but wasn’t a fan of the texture, deep fried milk — AMAZING mixed with ‘how does this even work?’, pork belly crispy rice — mouthwatering! Along with some staple green veg we were definitely stuffed by the end of the meal.
They also offered up some flower jelly as a dessert, they did tell me the name but I can’t figure out how to spell it. Flavour was great but I didn’t like the chunks of actual flowers in it, again a texture thing.
Stand out dish of the night had to be the pork belly crispy rice!

It’s really interesting that Tak Lung Restaurant started off as some sort of food stall serving stir fry as well as noodles with mixed pork parts for the blue collar factory and industrial workers in the area, eventually moving indoors to a larger space and eventually becoming the roasties, banquet dining, and lunch dim sum restaurant that the locals are all familiar with and love.
What really set Tak Lung apart from the competition was due to circumstance, and that was the closure of the old Kai Tak airport, resulting in traffic reduction. Owners and chefs took drastic measures and introduced a line up of old style dishes that were popular back in the day, but phased out due to food trends, health. It’s interesting how nobody gave two smells about food and culture that almost faded out of existence, and suddenly there is a movement to cling on to the past and make money out of it (the worst is people doing it for the $ake of it). However Tak Lung’s revival dishes not only were a huge hit, but they also executed them at a very high level.
Close to 2 to 3 weeks prior to the dinner, I located the restaurant’s email and tried my luck with inquiring about reservation and preorder dishes. To my surprise, they replied very promptly, were very professional and courteous, answered questions as to availability and even gave some really awesome recommendations. They also gave me exacting directions from Diamond Hill MTR station, and my friends and I found the restaurant without any issues or questions.
There’s too much on the menu, so I focused on a majority of the signature dishes everyone ordered and nailed down the menu and reservations, all through email!
Before the food came, I brought along a bottle of Beaujolais Cru 2013 Jean Paul Thevenet Morgon «Vieilles Vignes» to share. I don’t think Tak Lung stocks any wine, so bring your own. Unless you are dining in their private VIP room, no corkage fee!
Cold appetizer dish: cold bitter melon sticks with sour plum powder 梅子粉冰鎭涼瓜.
Absolutely incredible, with a light sweetness from the bitter melon, a very faint hint of bitter, and the really tasty semi salty and sweet/​sour from the plum powder. Really refreshing and delicious.
TL recommended this awesome double boiled soup 桃姿黑蒜燉螺頭. 桃姿 is a plant based gelatin that keeps form even under hot temperatures (and is organic). There was also black garlic in the soup, conch head, chicken feet, goji berry, dried mountain yam, and dried red dates. The color of the soup was telling. Well balanced comforting with a natural sweet finish. A major crowd pleaser.
Appetizer plate of the greats: Gold coin chicken 金錢雞, duck feet wrap 鴨腳包 and BBQ pork 叉燒. Gold coin chicken is a piece of large chicken liver, then a round shaped cut piece of pork fat that was marinated in sugar and rose wine for a week, wrapped with a piece of BBQ pork, shaped like a thick cookie. Duck feet wrap is a deboned duck foot, and had duck intestines and I remember a piece of taro, as well as the soft bones of the duck foot. The classic BBQ pork (cha siu) was spot on good, old style that was not fatty, lean and moist with a great bite to it. Pure bliss especially with the Beaujolais Cru!
Large pea sprout in fish broth 魚湯浸豆苗 — it’s like a take with superior broth, but using fish broth instead. Nice to have some veggies with a calorific meal
茶燻太爺雞 signature tea smoked chicken — this is one of the best chicken dishes in Hong Kong. The smoking process is rather complex and yet comes out as amazing as a nice smoked chicken in Taiwan. I believe they use either dragonwell or sau mei Chinese tea and other herbs. There is a good amount of super tasty yellow fat under the skin, and even the giblets (gizzard and liver) have the incredible smokey flavor. Can’t eat this back home… :-(Ruined for life!
雞蛋焗魚腸 baked fish intestines with eggs and dried orange peel. I actually did not preorder this, it was a «beautiful» mistake and misunderstanding from the restaurant, but we accepted it anyway. I believe these are grass carp fish intestines, and it takes a lot of work to gut and clean them. Nobody will do something like this in the States, far too time consuming for too little money. The texture was almost quiche like, and the dried citrus peel flavor made this very appealing to all of us.
山楂咕嚕肉 sweet and sour pork belly with sauce made from hawthorns (fresh, sticks, and flakes). Very classic that nobody could replicate. They use pork belly here instead of shoulder. Properly done frying and sauce coating (no excess goop sauce), natural sweet and sour, retaining crispyness!
Steamed crab over glutinous rice 蒸蟹糥米飯. Rice was good, but crab rather lean dry and skinny.
Baked lotus seed paste sago pudding 焗蓮容西米布甸. So damn good. Nobody in SF Bay Area can make it like this, why?!
Free House desserts given free at the end of the meal. Osmanthus goji berry jello. 桂花杞子糕 and Buckwheat dessert soup 麥米糖水.
Can’t wait to return!