How to Dine Without Spending a Fortune

Tip: Ways to Save on Your Hong Kong Meals

Wherever you decide to eat, remember that a 10% service charge will be added to your food-and-beverage bill. There is no tax, however. You can save a few Hong Kong dollars when eating out by keeping the following tips in mind:

• Eat your big meal at lunch. Most Asian (excluding Chinese) and Western restaurants offer special fixed-price lunches that are much cheaper than evening meals; their menus often include an appetizer, main course, and a side dish. Don't neglect expensive restaurants just because you assume they're out of your price range. If you feel like splurging, lunch is the way to go. For example, you can eat lunch at Gaddi's (one of Hong Kong's most famous restaurants) for HK$408 (US$53/£26) per person, including a glass of wine (dinner would be at least double that). Note, however, that set lunches may not be available on Sundays or holidays or may cost more on weekends.
• Jump on the buffet bandwagon. Buffet spreads are another great Hong Kong tradition and bargain. I find the quality is generally much, much better than what you typically find in the West. Even the priciest hotels offer buffets (witness the Island Shangri-La's café TOO), and a big part of their popularity is the variety, from sushi to roast beef to noodles to fresh seafood. Almost all hotels offer buffets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; independent restaurants are more likely to feature buffets at lunch (some allow you to choose your main dish from a menu, complemented with buffets for appetizers and desserts). Some include a variety of both Asian and Continental dishes, a real bonus for lone diners who want to sample a variety of cuisines at a reasonable cost. There are reduced prices for children.
• Eat an early or late dinner to take advantage of special fixed-price meals. A few restaurants offer early bird or late-night specials. If you dine before 7pm at trendy Felix, for example, a three-course meal costs only HK$448 (US$58/£29) as opposed to the HK$1,000 (US$130/£65) or more usually spent for dinner a la carte. At Harbourside in the InterContinental, the popular seafood buffet is cheaper if you dine after 9pm Friday and Saturday.
• If you want to imbibe, stick with tea. Hong Kong abolished import duties on wine and beer in 2008, making drinks with a meal even more enjoyable (in early 2007, the duty on wine was an astonishing 80%). That, coupled with a growing appreciative audience among young Hong Kong Chinese, has led to a much larger selection than ever before. Still, to keep prices down, stick to tea or try one of the two most popular and less expensive brands of beer: San Miguel (Filipino) and Tsingtao (Chinese).
• Go the dim sum route. Dim sum, served mainly in Cantonese restaurants, is another way to economize on breakfast or lunch. Dim sum are usually served three or four to a basket or plate; three baskets are usually filling enough for me, which means I can have breakfast or lunch for less than HK$120 (US$16/£8). If you don't want tea, be sure to say so. Otherwise, it will be brought to your table automatically and generally costs HK$8 (US$1.05/52p) and up.

I should add that many Chinese restaurants often have very long menus, sometimes listing more than 100 dishes. The most expensive dishes will invariably be such delicacies as bird's nest (bird's nest is a real nest, created by glutinous secretions of small swifts or swallows to build their nests), shark's fin, or abalone, for which the sky's the limit. In specifying price ranges for "main courses" under each Chinese establishment below, therefore, I excluded these delicacies, as well as inexpensive rice and noodle dishes which are considered side dishes (except, of course, in specialized noodle shops). In most cases, therefore, "main courses" refers to meat and vegetable combinations. Remember, since the price range is large, you can eat cheaply even at moderately priced restaurants by choosing wisely. Remember, too, that in Chinese restaurants it's customary to order one main dish for each diner, plus one extra to share.

The usual lunch hour in the SAR is from 1 to 2pm, when thousands of office workers pour into the city's more popular restaurants. Try to eat before or after the lunch rush hour, especially in Central, unless you plan on an expensive restaurant or have a reservation.

Unless stated otherwise, the open hours given below are exactly that -- the hours a restaurant remains physically open but not necessarily the hours it serves food. The last orders are almost always taken at least a half-hour before closing. Restaurants that are open for lunch from noon to 3pm, for example, will probably stop taking orders at 2:30pm. To avoid disappointment, call beforehand to make a reservation or arrive well ahead of closing time.

As for dress codes, unless otherwise stated, many upper-end restaurants have long done away with the jacket-and-tie requirement (those that do have a jacket requirement often have one on hand). Rather, "smart casual" or business casual is nowadays appropriate for most of the fancier places, meaning that men should wear long-sleeved shirts and that jeans, sport shoes, shorts, and flip-flops are inappropriate.

All of Hong Kong's restaurants went nonsmoking in 2007, prompting those that could to open outdoor terraces for smokers (bars will become nonsmoking on July 1, 2009).

Finally, in addition to the restaurant recommendations below, HKTB maintains a program called Quality Tourism Services (QTS), in which member restaurants adhere to stringent guidelines designed to help visitors find restaurants they can trust. A list of QTS restaurants is available on its website, www.discoverhongkong.com; restaurants that qualify also display a QTS decal in their shop.