During our most recent trip to Hong Kong, I vowed to try as much new restaurants as we could. So I started researching around the internet for places we’ve never been too and definitely found lots of new places. One of those is Tai Ping Koon, a restaurant that was founded in 1860 in Guangzhou and up to this day still has 4 branches in Hong Kong. The branch we visited was in Granville, Tsim Tsa Tsui, the nearest branch to our hotel.
The Granville area has a mix of restaurants, and some nice shopping options, including a discount beauty product store that was teeming with customers a couple of doors before Tai Ping Koon. We were not able to secure a reservation so we had to wait a bit in the stairway cum waiting area. The place has an old world fine dining feel but given the Hong Kong touch, cramped spaces, bustling waiters and buzzing conversation.
Since it was our first time at Tai Ping Koon, we decided to just order that had recommended list only except for the pork chop dish for Lauren.
The first thing that arrived was the TPK Style Chicken Wings in Swiss Sauce (HKD150 or around P825). The legend behind the Swiss sauce is that during the early days of Tai Ping Koon, a foreigner who while eating the TPK chicken wings exclaimed “sweet, sweet!”, the waiter mis heard him and thought their chef had invented a new Swiss sauce, and its been that way ever since.
There’s six plump pieces of chicken wings in a dark, fragrant sauce. The chicken meat was very tender and well marinated that the flavor reaches the bone. Lauren tried it first since she was a bit hungry already and proceeded to eat 3 whole chicken wings all by herself.
Baked Portuguese Style Chicken (HKD220/half or around P1200 ). The dish is definitely not the prettiest, with a yellow colored sauce half covering chopped pieces of roast chicken. The dish was ok but nothing special and it just could not compete with the swiss style wings. I’ve had a better one at Macau restaurant We did not finish this one.
Onion Sauce Pork Chops. We ordered this one for Lauren thinking she might not like the other dishes we ordered. One look at the dish when it arrived and we all knew Lauren was not going to eat this one. Irene and I each got a piece of the pork chop and was actually surprised at how much we liked it. It had a sauce similar to the swiss style wings but less sweet and had more onion flavor. The meat was also super tender that we hardly had to use force to slice it.
TPK Baked Souffle (HKD120 or around P660) This is one of the most popular things on their menu and it seems almost every table ordered it. It’s HUGE!, I think its even bigger than my head. We already got an idea of the size when we saw order after order being served to different tables. Lauren was not paying attention since she was busy wolfing down the wings so she was quite shocked when it arrived on our table.
The souffle is fluffy, airy and very hot, with steam rising up once I punctured the dome shell. There’s a slight sweetness inside that was just right for us, we ended up finishing the whole thing while leaving the rest of the baked chicken.
Eating at Tai Ping Koon Restaurant is expensive but its the adventure and experience I appreciated. 1960s inspired Hong Kong fine dining ambiance coupled with HK style western food and its something I’m glad I tried. Would I go back, maybe in a few years when my wallet has recovered or if I want some more of the souffle.
Tai Ping Koon Restaurant
40 Granville Road, Tsi Tsa TsuiKowloon, Hong Kong
(852) 2576-9161
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I’ve been wanting to try this for years based on my friend’s rabid insistence. But now I think I’ll pass. It’s quite expensive and doesn’t seem all that impressive.
You should go try the souffle, I read somewhere that they have afternoon sets for that.