Hong Cafe Honolulu

This place just started their night hours last month. We ordered fried rice and fried (rice & flat) noodles. The new cook was very very good. They also served soup with our dishes. Finally, a good place to eat at night in Chinatown.

The lunch trio stopped in at HK Café on Maunakea St because we received good reviews from a few co-workers and friends. HK Café took over the space previously occupied by Happy Garden, just North of Hotel Street. The menu is a single, double-sided plastic encased sheet; with different (lower) prices than seen on the menu for the Waikiki location. We tried the Beef Brisket and Beef Tendon Stewed Noodles, Seafood Laksa with egg noodles and the Curry Fish Balls (sorry, no pic). The menu cautioned that it could take up to twenty minutes to prepare certain dishes; it took nine minutes for the noodle dishes, almost twenty minutes for the laksa and a little longer for the fish balls. The beef brisket / tendon dish ($16) reminded us of a similar dish from Mini Garden but the soup is vastly superior. The laksa ($17) was spicy (yes!) and contained two large shrimp, two mussels and pieces of squid and fishcake. The dish that disappointed us was the curried fish balls ($11); it was hyped as a “must have” by an acquaintance … Uh, underwhelming was the group consensus. Final thoughts … excepting the fish balls, we liked what we ordered and would return. That’s about as good an endorsement as our group doles out for a casual dining spot.