Chiu Yuen Chiu Chow Noodle – Delicious Chiu Chow Style Beef Patty and Fish Ball Noodle Soup in Wan Chai, Hong Kong

Chiu Yuen Chiu Chow Noodle潮苑正宗潮州粉麵 is a chiu chow (teochew / chao zhou) style noodle soup restaurant.  While there are tons of chiu chow style noodle soup restaurants in Hong Kong, Chiu Yuen is a little different because they specialize in a beef patty that I haven’t really seen at other places and they also advertise how everything is handmade.  The restaurant is pretty well heralded as you will see by many newspaper and blog articles they have pasted on their window when you walk in.

It’s located on Spring Garden Lane in Wan Chai.  Wan Chai generally has a lot of great restaurants and within Wan Chai, Spring Garden Lane has a concentration of good local style food (i.e. you won’t find a lot of non-Chinese at these restaurants).  I actually wasn’t planning on going to this place even though I knew about it, but I was at Kam Fung and decided to try it since it was next door.

The restaurant is a narrow restaurant with typical décor for a local place (i.e. there isn’t much) that said it was very clean and wasn’t rushed and crazy like a lot of local spots.  The servers were also quite nice.  I have no idea whether or not anyone speaks any English, but nothing was written in English.

Beef Patty and Fish Ball Noodle Soup:

This is their signature dish.  You have a choice of three noodles and I got the he fen, which is medium thickness rice noodle.  The broth was very good.  I was expecting a broth that was going to be clean, but light in flavor.  However, while it was light, it was slightly tangy and sour, which I thought was a nice touch.  The noodles were good rice noodles cooked perfectly.  The fish balls were amazing, some of the best fish balls I’ve ever had.  They had a good clean flavor and the texture was outstanding, softer than factory made fish balls, but not mushy.  The beef patty was different than what I was expecting; I was expecting them to be very tender, but instead they were pretty springy.  They had a good flavor and weren’t too beefy in flavor.  The condiments were diced green onions served in a spoon and I also added fried garlic and chili oil, which went very well with it.  Their chili oil was excellent chiu chow style chili oil, which has ground up dried shrimp in it and was surprisingly kind of spicy, which is weird since Hong Kong people aren’t too big on spicy food.  I’m not sure if they have an English menu or not, but in case they don’t I took a picture of the menu and it’s the third dish down (the first one just has fish balls and the second one just has beef patty, but the third one is the combo).  8.5/10 (9/10 for fish balls, 8.25/10 for beef patty, 8.5/10 for broth, 8.5/10 for noodles)

Overall, while I don’t think this will be a revelation, it is quite good and it’s the type of dish I could eat on a regular basis as it’s not too heavy, but still delicious.  Definitely worth checking out if you’re in the area.

Address:
G/F 37 Spring Garden Lane
Wan Chai 灣仔春園街37號地下
Phone: 2892 2322