New Wong Kok Restaurant

The New Wong Kok Restaurant (NWK) has replaced the New Emperor Restaurant in Luyang. I enjoy the dim sum and a la carte food at the original Wong Kok, especially when it just opened, so I was quite confident that the new branch would not disappoint.

In the last two months, I've been to NWK for dim sum twice and dinner 3 times. The dim sum is passable good for KK standards and the a la carte menu items are very variable, ranging from disastrous to very good. The first time I dined there, my hub and I shook our heads all through the meal. We had the stewed pork leg (awful) and the mayo prawns (awful) and a plate of stir-fried greens. I didn't want to go near the restaurant again but this week I had to go twice, for a birthday dinner and a pre-wedding dinner.

The birthday dinner was surprisingly good and made me think that maybe I picked the wrong dishes the first time. This is what we had:


Stir-fried spring onions and ginger grouper slices. The grouper slices were fresh, meaty, delicious and the skin slightly chewy.


Steamed lean free-range chicken. Served with a minced ginger dip, the chicken was sweet and moist.


Crispy pork knuckle was good too although my friend thinks Equatorial Restaurant does a better version.


Sabah veggies with egg, yum.


This is a more fancy take on the humble Chinese steamed egg dish. Unlike Japanese chawan mushi, which is served in individual bowls, Chinese steamed egg is usually served in one big dish to share. Here, NWK jazzes up the dish by topping it with diced steamed egg, meat and veggies. The surprise was that it wasn't steamed egg but steamed house-made tofu under all those toppings. Yum. I enjoyed this dish and I want to replicate it at home. 

The next night, we went for a pre-wedding dinner at NWK again and although overall the food was edible (6/10), I came away feeling that the dinner was rather coarse. From the hot platter (6/10) to the fish maw soup (thin, bland 4/10) to the dried shrimps prawns (5/10) to the sweet and sour pork chops (too sweet, pork was too bicarbed, 4/10), I tried to be kind but the food just didn't impress.

The only two dishes I liked was the smoked tea leaves chicken and the steamed cod fish but cod being such a tasty fish can't go wrong even in the hands of an amateur. The last dish, taro ring with mixed veggies, was the worst because the taro was off. When steamed taro's been left for too long, it has a slight sourish taste. I glanced at the next table of young people and they had finished all their taro whereas at our table, the taro was left uneaten except for one person who didn't have much taste buds. The older adults knew the difference between fresh and gone bad and didn't eat the taro. And that's one thing about young people these days. They can't tell if they are eating food that's off. They just wolf everything down. Except for my Sniffer, who, like me, dropped his piece of taro at first bite. We complained and the waitress said "Thank you, thank you". Thank you for what? No apologies, no offer to replace the dish or refund the money. The thing about most Chinese restaurants is, customers are always wrong. I supposed that's why Chinese dining is cheaper. I'm so not going there again except for the dim sum. It's not that I'm difficult to please. It's that a few hours later, my stomach ached. The next day, my mom said she made two runs to the toilet. Enough said.


Smoked tea leaves free-range chicken. Similar to the steamed chicken except that it had a slight smoky flavor. Very yum.


Steamed cod--delicious.

Make that three items that I liked because I asked for an extra plate of the free dessert, the coconut snow jelly. My son thought it was disgusting because it was foamy but I liked it.




New Wong Kok Restaurant, Luyang Phase 1, same block as Apiwon.