Shui Kee Coffee — Restaurant in Hong Kong Island

Locating Shui Kee Coffee:

Enter the Municipal Building (the big governmenty looking one) from Morrison Street, take the escalator up, shimmy your way through the wet market, find the next escalator up — you’re almost there — through the door and it’s to the right. If you see a little red board with a menu of some sorts, you know you’ve found it.

Food & drink:

I ordered the typical Yeet Lai Cha (hot milk tea) and Sino-MeiGwok:faux-Françoise type toast affair and sat around enjoying the scenery. I’m ultra sensitive to sugar, so I’m glad one of the other patrons assisted me in asking for less of the condensed milk on top of the French toast. (Thank you sir!) It took a bit long for the stuff to be served, but no stars deducted, as I counted around 20 customers to two to staff members — that’s one in the kitchen and one serving, so I know that’s a tough ratio to wrangle.

Toast came and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A little different in profile from the usual French Toasts I’ve had in Cha Chaan Teng placed — looked a little more unassuming, ordinary, really.

But man... It was banging!

The crisp on it must have been just a micro-millimeter of dank crunch, the next layer a nice sheet of sorta-soggy-flavourful egginess, and below that a good amount of necessarily artificial sponge you get from your typical supermarket white bread — not overly soaked in egg!

As you can see from the images, my thorough investigation of the bread (it comes two slices atop one another) shows the outer layer with a great golden brown finish to dark (I’ll go out on a limb and say Martin Yan approved), and the inner: soft, moist and warm, with a moderate coat of condensed milk — all in all great texture — it’s all in the proportion.

I’d be on the fence about a 4 or 5 star rating, as the tea was so/so. I woulda gone with the bottled milk tea (seems it was what everybody else was having) but I had assumed it would have sugar and I knew the French Toast would already do it for me.

I’m gonna guess that if I had gone with the bottled milk tea, I might have been blown into a sphere of joyous comatose by the pleasantness of the whole thing. A good reason to go back, at any rate! (So 5/5 it is)

Total cost (in HKD): $15 Milk Tea, $27 French Toast, $8 tip = $50.

Worth it.

Nice little local HK style place. Defo...

I didn't want to write about this place because I wanted to keep it a secret breakfast place for myself. I changed my mind because not letting the world know about it would be very unfair to the proprietors and to those how want that classic HK-style breakfast food so here we are. First know that this is not a restaurant; it is merely a stall in the "food court" of a local wet market (building) so adjust your expectation of the accommodations accordingly. The food also is not fancy by any stretch of imagination; you get the home-style, basic fried eggs, instant ramen noodles, and toasts - but oh the toasts! The "French toast" is done very well but is the most expensive. Note that most things served here are not of the "healthy" kind; besides the eggs which are fresh, most ingredients are from the cans (lunch meat or spam for those from the US and salted minced beef) but these dishes represent the breakfast food that has evolved locally since the mid-1940's so there is a large component of nostalgia for those who love it. The coffee and the milk-tea are also excellent; try the cold milk-tea which is served in bottles; no worries about dilution by ice. This is how much I love this place: my last visit to HK lasted a week and we stayed at a place on the other side of the island; for straight three days we got up and took a 30-minute ride on the MTR to have breakfast here. I hope you will agree after you have...

The food is like the good old Hong Kong “tai pai dong 大牌檔” food, simple and not many choices. The Egg and Beef Roll 蛋牛包 is very good. The French Toast 西多士 there is quite different from those served in many other coffee shops 茶餐廳; French Toast here is less greasy and less oily, though less egg, not so thick and not deep fried to dark golden brown, it is the best taste French Toast in Hong Kong and a joy to eat. They also serve noodles and sandwiches. For drinks, the Cold Milk Tea is a must; it comes in a bottle and keeps its richness to the last sip because no ice is used. The tea and the coffee are Hong Kong style therefore rich and thick as evaporated milk is used. If you have a sweet tooth, try tea with condensed milk 茶走or coffee with condensed milk啡走 which only served hot. The service is slow because only one person works in the kitchen and one lady doing the rest of work - taking order, serving food and drinks, cleaning the tables, collecting money, and often also helping with food and drink preparation. The service is very friendly, typical your friendly neighborhood eatery, but the lady server does not chat with the customers because she simply is too busy. So, do not go if you...