New Eats | Hong Kong Hits

The city’s latest obsession is a dowdy homage to the classic Hong Kong cha canting with smudged glass tables, art deco stained glass accents and tiled floors already grungy from legions of diners enjoying their meals under the fluorescent lights. Cha resembles your danwei’s cafeteria more than your usual glitzy Cantonese restaurant, but, then again, it isn’t trying to be the next Crystal Jade with its humble menu of blue-collar hits , ranging from customizable wonton, fish ball and noodle soups to crispy roast chicken and comical fusion dishes like spam and macaroni in soup.

With a resident Hong Kong native in tow, we (meticulously) ate through every section of the menu. We began with a spread of dishes to pair with our steamed jasmine rice: silken tofu with scallops (¥36), Chinese okra in fish soup (¥28), ox tongue curry (¥32) and a whole claypot of pork in preserved mustard (¥36). Each was on a different wavelength of delicious.

The tofu was by far the crowd favorite–every delicate, fresh square was topped with a large, equally silken slice of scallop and finished with just a tad of black bean sauce. The intimidatingly huge portion of braised pork in mustard had a wonderfully gluttonous mouthfeel due to almost 50/50 fat and lean meat ratio and saucy greens perfect for dredging our rice with. The curry was a bit greasy, though flavorful with coconut and generous chunks of soft ox tongue. The faintly sweet okra in bland, tepid fish stock was relegated to the back burner.

Of course, we couldn’t leave without trying Cha’s version of the classic macaroni, spam and soup concoction (¥18). It wasn’t quite delicious with a bright yellow broth that tasted distantly of chicken, but the macaroni and fried, salty spam made the dish oddly comforting, like gussied up Campbell’s chicken soup. We finished our meal with another quintessential treat–pineapple buns (¥6 each) with delicate, crumbly crusts and fresh baked sweet bread underneath.

Joanne Yao