Tai Mei Tuk has plenty of activities in the day, but by sundown, you know where everyone's heading - it's Chung Shing Thai for dinner, nowhere else comes close. To be fair, I've never really bothered venturing to any other Southeast Asian restaurant down this street because, in the last 10 years I've been frequenting this restaurant, it has never failed me. Although it's very much a Chinese interpretation of Thai food, Chung Shing Thai has still got the classics like fishcakes and pomelo salad. In every Thai market, you're sure to find a satay stand - the pork, chicken, and beef satays here are similarly aromatic, charred on the grill, served with a standard peanut sauce. The pork is quite fatty here, as seen in the pork neck salad with a crunchy chili sauce. The morning glory or tung choi, is another classic Thai dish, and cooked extremely well - the stems still have a bite, not overcooked which is an apparently difficult thing to do for some eateries, and the flavours are overwhelming with fish sauce, garlic, and soy beans. I'm currently obsessed with their stir-fried baby cabbage with salted fish, the super salty chunks of fish mingling with the superbly crunchy veg.
Thai classics aside, we go for the deep-fried Goby fish every time, the fish curled up from an intense, high flame, and soft, white flesh dipped in a sweet soy sauce with raw chilis and coriander. It is a must have, as I've yet to find anywhere else in Hong Kong that can deep fry the goby as well as this. Other seafood dishes, like the grilled squid and crab curry, are good picks too.
Instead of pad thai, there are a number of other noodle dishes that resemble your typical chaan teng stir-fried rice noodles, embellished perhaps with a few Southeast Asian eccentricities like fish sauce or coriander.
As for soups, of course there's tom yum, but we recently got the tom kha gai, or coconut chicken soup, which A and I have been fantasizing over since our last trip to Phuket. The variation at Chung Shing Thai was commendable, although slightly creamier than we had had before. The curries are also creamier than the curry dishes we tried in Thailand, but some people prefer it this way. I'm on the fence.
To sum - go for the deep-fried Goby fish and don't forget your veggies. The best part about all this is that a fat meal for two (three or four dishes with rice) usually comes under $400. read more