Bowrington Road Market and Cooked Food Centre

Bomb-​dot-​com. This place rocks. It’s one of these quintessential HK chaotic, no-​frills dining experiences. I was here late on a Saturday, and both «the halal place» and «the duck place» were shut — those are the two places that most people mention. And it was STILL terrific; I went to «the place that’s to the back and the right as you enter from the steps», and had a fantastic salt-​fried squid, just perfect, and an equally excellent Hainan-​style boneless chicken.
And my waiter was totally nice. I find in general that the stereotype that some Westerners have of service in these places is inaccurate: the staff are harried, sure, and it’s not fine dining. But I’ve yet to find friendliness/​calmness not reciprocated with the staff trying to help me navigate menus, choices, and being totally solid.
This place is varied, cheap, delicious, and fun — highly recommended.

My good friend and I met this eve for a much needed catch up. The plan was initially to go to another place, a ‘normal’ restaurant, but I had long wanted to go to one of the cooked food centres located on the top floor of some wet markets and I suggested we try Browrington Road, as it seemed to be the best one in the island. He had been there before, for lunch, and knew the place.
I hadn’t tried any cooked food centre yet because I don’t speak Cantonese, neither I can read it, so I had a failed attempt at ordering once at the Lockhart Road market one and never came back… When we got there by 7.30pm it was pretty packed and it took us a while to find a free table, or at least, a couple of free seats. We finally sat by the lift, which wasn’t ideal, but the whole place was pretty loud so it didn’t really make a difference. This is obviously not a glamorous place and that’s what I like about it. They brought us the cutlery which I cleaned with the hot tea and my friend ordered three dishes: pork in a super yummy ‘salad’ sauce, clams and veggies with pieces of pork. All soo delicious… and cheap. For all that plus a big beer that he ordered we paid less than 200HKD. It took them a little while to serve the food but the company and conversation was so good that it probably seemed shorter! I’m coming back here and taking more people with me and I do recommend this place, just know that it’s pretty laid back, noisy and busy. But that’s part of its charm.