Kejia (Hakka) Cuisine @ Zhongxin Kejiawang 中信客家王

Kejia (Hakka) food is very easy to find in Shenzhen and wherever you find one of these restaurants, you will find reasonably priced food that is value for money and a big crowd, as Hakka food is very popular. Zhongxin Kejiawang Hakka restaurant is not easy to find as the front of the restaurant is hidden from view of the main road by trees. However, at any given meal time, there is a decent crowd at the restaurant. Naturally, following the herd instinct, I followed the crowd in.

The menu is pretty much standard Hakka fare and in any Hakka restaurant, my acid test items are the chicken stew (清炖鸡), pork soup (猪肉汤), braised bean curd (让豆腐) and the vegetables cooked in lard (猪油炒菜). I ordered everything except the chicken.

The soup was tasty and on a scale of one to ten, I would give it a seven. Not the best I have had but good enough to be above average. This is not to say that the soup was poor. It is quite good.






Braised bean curd (让豆腐) is a classic Hakka dish. The bean curd is hand made and freshly made daily. As a result, the taste is unforgettable. The smoothness and the flavour of beans rather than flour in the supermarket variety combined with the bits of minced meat topping and the preserved beans used to flavour the dish. Excellent. And polished cleanly within minutes.



The pig trotters (糖醋猪手) cooked in sugar and vinegar tasted excellent. However, I found the pig trotters to be a bit chewy. It seems that the chef could have cooked the trotters a longer so that the skin and the meat would fall off the moment you bite into it.



The choy sum vegetables cooked in lard was excellent. Cholesterol aside, I maintain that lard just makes the vegetables taste so much better. And even the lard is delicious.



The rice is not cooked in a rice cooker like most other restaurants. Instead, it is individually cooked in earthen bowls and steamed in a large cooker. It seems that the earthen bowls impart a unique fragrance to the steamed rice and somehow enhances the flavour of the rice, making it taste even more fragrant than Thai fragrant rice.



This restaurant serves authentic and delicious Hakka food. It is a bit hard to get to, but the trip will be well worth it.

The address:
Zhongxin Kejiawang Jinhai Road next to the Houhai Wholesale Market, Nanshan, Shenzhen 中信客家王 深圳南山近海路后海批发市场旁
Directions via my Shenzhen Food Map
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Roast Goose @ Xinwenhua Hong Kong style cafe 新文华港式茶餐厅

While getting into the basement carpark of Shenzhen's Coastal City Shopping Mall, I passed by a new Hong Kong style cafe next to the entrance of the car park, right opposite another Hong Kong restaurant Cafe de Coral. So, as it was time for a meal, I decided to give this new restaurant a try. The posters on the outside proudly proclaim the Hong Kong heritage. So it is with a certain amount of expectation that I stepped inside.

The interior of the restaurant is pretty nice with purple cushions on the chairs and waiters and waitresses all dressed in black. Then it started to go all wrong. First, I took out my laptop and a waiter said they had wifi available, only that the signal was a little weak. I checked out the signal and found that it was actually Cafe de Coral's wifi base station. Oh.

Roast goose is one of my favourite foods and to me, that is the classic item you order at a Hong Kong style cafe. And so I ordered a roast goose and barbecued pork mix with rice and it arrived shortly.



First impression was good grief, the portions are miserly! It seems that their chef is related to scrooge. However, it looks good and maybe it is the triumph of quality over quantity. Unfortunately, it was not. Neither the roast goose or the barbecued pork was good. The pork was overly sweet, tough and cold. The goose was even tougher. But they were both beaten handily by the vegetables. Effectively, this was a poor meal and I do not expect to see this store last very long unless something changes. Or unless they do other dishes better. I do not think I will be going to find out either.

The address:
Xinwenhua, Office Tower, Coastal City Shopping Mall, Nanshan District, Shenzhen 新文华 深圳南山海岸城办公楼
Directions there using my Shenzhen Food Map



Other roast goose restaurants reviewed:
Fat Girl's 肥妹烧腊店
MC Charcoal Goose Restaurant 味宗烧鹅
Tai Hing Roase Goose 太兴烧鹅
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Roast Goose @ Fat Girl's Roast Meat Restaurant 肥妹烧腊店

Fat Girl's Roast Meat Restaurant is a local restaurant that has grown from strength to strength over the last six years since I first ate at their first restaurant. They have consistently offered great tasty roasts along with generous portions for a reasonable price with a good solid meal available for just 10 RMB. Naturally their prices have risen a little over the years but compared with the prices out there, they offer excellent value for a budget priced meal.

I ordered the roast goose drumstick with rice (烧鹅腿饭) and I was first served with a bowl of soup. Normally, soup at roast meat restaurants are pretty dismal. You expect to see a bowl of boiled water that has been flavoured with some oil and soy sauce. Not this one. The taste of the soup was fragrant and tasty. The soup appears to be made from the bone rack of the roast goose that is left over after chopping up the roast goose for customers. As such, I could taste the goose as well as some of the spices that was stuffed into the goose. An excellent start to the meal and I am ready to eat.



The roast goose drumstick came served and compared to the previous meals at Tai Hing 太兴 and MC Charcoal Goose where I ordered basically the same thing for about the same price, the portions was nearly double of what the other two restaurants served for a comparable price. In terms of taste, the goose meat was excellent. The skin was crisp and the meat underneath was tender and juicy. I thought the only blemish to an excellent dish of roast goose was that the meat was a tad bit salty and it seemed that the chef was a little too generous with the spicing the goose before it was roasted.



I highly recommend this restaurant if you happen to be in the area and fancy a quick and delicious meal that takes a very small bite of your wallet.

The address:
Fat Girl's Roast Meat Restaurant, Yitian Road (next to Shuidu Spa), Futian District, Shenzhen 肥妹烧腊店 深圳福田益田路水都水疗会隔壁
Google Map Directions



Other roast goose restaurants reviewed:
MC Charcoal Goose Restaurant 味宗烧鹅
Tai Hing Roase Goose 太兴烧鹅
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Earthern Pot Noodles @ Xinsheng Changfenwang 新盛肠粉王

Hunan earthern pot noodles (罐罐面) is a popular quick and affordable meal that offers a combination of convenience, speed and great slow cooked taste. A paradox, it seems but the noodles cooked in traditional Chinese soup that has spent hours on a slow boil and laced with a bit of meat or vegetables.

I ordered the beef earthern pot noodles (牛腩罐罐面) for princely sum of 12 RMB and it arrived after a wait of five minutes, it arrived steaming hot. The soup was fragrant and the portion of noodles was enough to fill an average adult. The beef portions was not very generous but in the context of the price of the meal, I reckon I got my money's worth and a satisfied tummy.



In addition to the noodles, the restaurant serves an assortment of set meals and their title dish changfen (肠粉) which is a broad rice noodle rolled into a tube and served with soy sauce and chili. It is sometimes also filled with meats or vegetables inside to provide variety of taste. I will find an opportunity to sample the rest of their food some other time.

The address:
Xinsheng Changfenwang, Kingkey Banner Plaza (at the back facing the village), Baishi Road, Nanshan District, Shenzhen 新盛肠粉王 深圳南山白石路京基百纳广场后面
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Roast Goose @ MC Charcoal Goose 味宗烧鹅

MC Charcoal Goose is a Hong Kong restaurant chain that has opened a chain of franchise restaurants in China. The signs, posters and menu all over the exterior and interior of MC Charcoal Goose (味宗烧鹅) proudly proclaim: 鹅香不怕巷子深. This roughly translates to "if the goose smells fragrant, you do not fear if the restaurant is tucked in an alley." This restaurant certainly appears very proud of the quality of their roast goose. And roast goose is their title event. So I walked in with high hopes of finding great food. The place is tiny and I thought it had pretty intriguing decor with lovely faux marble tables and stools. The stools were not very comfortable though but it would suffice for a quick meal and exit.



First disappointment came when I looked at the open kitchen. There is a microwave and the food is heated in the microwave before serving. Uh-oh.



I ordered the roast goose drumstick and Macanese roast pork with rice. The portions are reasonable with a generous helping of boiled vegetables. Picking up a piece of the roast goose with my chopsticks provided a second disappointment. The goose was chopped in portions that appear to be targeted at people with mouths the size of a hippopotamus. The chef who chopped the meat is clearly an amateur. I could do better than that and I admit that I am hopeless at this. That said, the goose meat was poor for what is supposed to be a Hong Kong restaurant chain coming to China to show the locals how to do goose properly. Firstly, the skin was soggy and no longer crisp and while the skin and the meat was nicely separated, the fat was not roasted off properly and there was still way too much fat between the skin and the meat. Taking a bite of the meat, it was a bit on the tougher side. While it is by no means bad, having tasted well roasted goose, this in comparison is not an example of good roast.

Roast pork was even worse. The roast came with a thick hard skin that was neither crisp nor edible. Chewing it was a challenge. A well done roast pork should have a crispy skin that you could crunch and enjoy. On the bright side, the meat below the skin was tender and done quite nicely.

The vegetables were old and overly fibrous. So that topped off a rather poor meal with more downers than highlights. You might wonder why I am rather hard on the food. The main reason is their boast plus the price - 44 RMB for that plate, more than double the price of the same serving anywhere else in Shenzhen. In fact, this is probably even expensive by Hong Kong standards. So the disappointment is magnified.



It seems that this is a franchise store and I think the franchise owner needs to know how badly their name was being dragged in mud by not controlling the quality of the food they serve or the operators that they license their name to. Especially when they are premium priced.

The address:
MC Charcoal Goose, Coastal City East Tower Block facing Kempinski Hotel, Nanshan, Shenzhen 味宗烧鹅 深圳南山海岸城东座凯宾斯基酒店对面
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Roast Goose and Iced Milk Tea @ Tai Hing 太兴

Tai Hing (太兴) is a famous Hong Kong chain of tea cafes or chacanting (茶餐厅) and is well known for their roasts (烧腊) and their iced milk tea （冰镇奶茶). They are priced reasonably and are serve mainly set meals although they do a variety of Cantonese dishes as well. In Shenzhen, the restaurant is usually packed, particularly during weekends when Hongkongers come up to Shenzhen and for reasons best known to themselves, have more Hong Kong food even though they are in Shenzhen. This is something I find hard to understand. It is like going to Italy and popping into Macdonald's for burger! Why would any one want to do that? Shenzhen has plenty of food options that one can sample and you can keep going for years and not need to repeat, unless, of course, the food is so good you want to.

I popped over to the restaurant in the early afternoon to avoid the lunch time crowd. At 2pm, the restaurant was still half full. As I was in a hurry, I opted for a simple meal and ordered their two main specialties - roast goose drumstick with rice and iced milk tea.

The roast goose was of their typically high standards. The skin was roasted to a thin crisp and the meat was juicy and tender underneath. For the less familiar, the small dish beside the plate is sour plum sauce. You dip the meat into the sauce as the meat tends to be rather oily and the sour plum sauce takes away much of the greasiness. My only complaint in this was the miserly portion of sauce and it was hardly enough for the meal. The portions are reasonably sized and those with larger appetites are best advised to order another dish to complement it.



The iced milk tea is the specialty and they have made an innovation in the serving off iced tea. The tea is served with the cup half immersed in a bowl of ice. This preserves the icy cold temperature of the tea. The tea is smooth to drink and has a slight acidic taste that serves as a counterpoint to the sweetness of the condensed milk in the tea. Ordinarily, the acidic taste tends to make the tea taste worse or old, like it has been left standing in the tea leaves for too long. In this case, I think it actually enhances the taste of it. The only downside to this is the price. It costs 15 RMB for that small cup of tea. It is not overly high if one considers the price of Starbucks' coffee in comparison.



Overall, it is worth a visit but keep away during the weekends and go during off peak periods or be prepared to stand in a queue outside the restaurant for a while.

The address:
Tai Hing, Wanxiang Street (right behind MixC Shopping Mall, Luohu, Shenzhen 太兴茶餐厅 深圳罗湖万象街万象城后面
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Chaozhou Beef Noodles @ ChangTeng Noodle House 长腾潮州面馆

Whenever I do not feel too good or I have had too heavy and greasy meals over a period of time, this is the place I go for a cleansing. This restaurant specializes in traditional Chaozhou (潮州) style beef noodles and soup.

I always order the same two soups that are their specialty. First is the lotus rhizhome with pig innards soup (猪杂莲耦汤). The soup is a light clear broth made from pig innards and the lotus rhizome is pre-stewed so that it is already soft and sticky. The soup is just fragrant and perfect for a light meal.



The second house specialty is the watercress soup (西洋菜汤). If not properly cooked, watercress tends to have a strong flavour and on the fibrous side. The vegetables here are done nicely with the soup flavoured lightly with a distinct watercress flavour but yet not overpowering to put off the uninitiated. As watercress is high in fibre, those on a diet can take some comfort in this despite the high cholesterol coming from the pig innards.



One other specialty is the beef ball noodles (牛肉丸汤粉). While their beef balls are by no means the best I have ever tried, they are pretty good with the right amount of chewiness and texture and tastes of beef. They are hand beaten till they achieve a certain level of chewiness and springiness and yet are tender to bite on and smoothly textured. I have had beef balls that are hard and tastes more of the flour that is used to hold the beef balls in shape.



The address:
Changteng Chaozhou Noodle House, Huaqiang Bei Road (just north of the Shenzhen City Hospital for Traditional Chinese Medicine), Futian District, Shenzhen 长腾潮州面馆 深圳福田华强北路市中医院北测
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Chinese Herbal Soup @ Hung Fook Tong 鸿福堂

Today I had the most terrible meal I've had in Shenzhen for a very long time. It was a total rip-off in my opinion. The family went to Coastal City which is the most posh mall you can find on the western side of Shenzhen. And getting hungry, we hopped into this small eatery which I have never tried before. It served a mix of Chinese herbal soup and dishes along with organic food. On paper, it sounds like a winning formula. Very healthy eating. I have passed this place by for two years since the mall opened and I've never once walked in. And for good reason why, as I was soon to discover.

The first item on the table was my soup. I ordered mutton with danggui and ginger soup (当归生姜炖羊肉汤). A perfectly great soup for winter as it warms the body nicely. I have taken this soup elsewhere and I rather like it. My first sip was one of utter disappointment. This is like drinking tap water! The soup portion was generous but the taste was terrible. Or rather, there wasn't any taste in it. What a waste of 45 RMB!



The next dish to arrive was the fried noodles (干烧伊面). And it was slightly better. Only slightly. Apart from rather ungenerous portions of noodles and nothing else apart from 6 thin slices of mushroom, it at least tasted a bit better than my soup.



Next came my main course, beef and radish stew with rice (清汤萝卜牛腩饭). My god, my day just got worse. All I could taste of the stew was salt. No flavour of the beef, let alone the mild sweetness from radish when it is stewed. And the plate of rice came and it could not decide it was rice or porridge. It turned out to be a mix of both. No photos of the rice here, as at this point, I was totally fed up with my meal.



The only bright spot in the day was the hard boiled egg cooked in tea (茶叶蛋). That, I must admit, was good. It was fragrant and I would like to say it saved the day, but it didn't.



On the whole, this restaurant is terrible and I wonder how they survived for so long. I guess you could go there for the tea eggs. Here are the details of the place, in case you want to try in spite of my experience.

The address:
Hung Fook Tong, Basement 1 just outside the Jusco Supermarket, Coastal City Shopping Mall, Nanshan District, Shenzhen. 深圳南山区文心五路海岸城负一楼吉之岛超市外



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Great tasty claypot porridge in Shenzhen

Today I tried a new place with great Teochew claypot porridge (潮州沙锅粥). 80RMB bought a roe crab and 500g of fresh prawns serving 3 adults and the porridge came flavoured with shredded squid, ginger and mushroom. I couldn't quite taste what seasonings were used but the end result was excellent. Definitely worth returning for more.


It's not a great shot but as much as can be expected from a camera phone taken under poor light conditions.

The address: Shahe Street, Nanshan District, Shenzhen 深圳市南山区沙河街

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