Hoover Restaurant

OK, you wanna get local? I don’t mean having an «authentic» dim sum experience at Victoria Seafood in Admiralty, I mean proper local. The sort of place where the staff come out of the toilet and, without missing a beat, dry their hands on your table cloth. That sort of local?
Welcome to Hoover Restaurant in Sau Mau Ping. Where you say? Yep, Sau Mau Ping is so local, that there isn’t even an MTR. The only way there is bus from Admiralty, or minibus from Kwun Tong. Look, if you are an adventurous type, by all means head on up there. It’s a pleasant bus ride and a good opportunity to hang out on a HK «council estate». Fortunately, this is far from the Blackbird Leys type of council estate, so you will be perfectly safe.
The restaurant itself is in a shopping centre, which in itself is an interesting place to poke around, and is a fairly standard Chinese dim sum experience. It has a massive dining room, that is packed to the rafters every day. You will inevitably end up sharing a table with an old man that looks like a tortoise, who is shooting Courvoisier at 11am like it’s going out of fashion. Oh, and as well as rinsing your crockery, don’t look at the floor. Whilst is has a lovely plush carpet, it’s often difficult to see the pattern under the napkins, toothpicks, and chicken feet bones.
The food is reasonable. Fine dining no, but a solid dim sum performer. Would you come all the way here for the food alone? No, probably not, but the experience of seeing how the other half live is a curious addition. They do one thing that I find rare in HK, they serve salted ham rice dumplings all year round. These are the fist sized sticky rice balls crammed with green beans, salted ham, and salted egg, that you tend to only get during Dragon Boat Festival.
Give it a go, you may find an affinity for the working man…