Ser Wong Fun – Chinese Sausages…and Snake Soup In Central

Ser Wong Fun (蛇王芬) and Se Wong Yee (蛇王二) are two well-known snake soup restaurants in Hong Kong.  There are others, but I heard about these restaurants when I first started coming to Hong Kong a long time ago.  I’m not sure if they’re related, but their names (Ser Wong Fun means Snake King Fragrance and Se Wong Yee means Snake King 2) and menus are very similar, so maybe they are or were related.  Anyhow, I’ve been to both of them, but a long time ago far before I started blogging.  So, I decided that it would be a good time to re-visit them and write one of them up and I happened to be meeting some friends who live in Mid-Levels, so Ser Wong Fun got the nod.

Ser Wong Fun is located in Central at the bottom of Mid-Levels.  The exterior of the restaurant looks a bit out of place because most of the stores around there are reasonably modern and Western whereas Ser Wong Fun is old school and Chinese.  The interior of the restaurant is plain, but kept clean.  All the menus are in Chinese only, their Mandarin is heavily accented and I highly doubt they speak English.  If you come here you should definitely bring someone who speaks Chinese or at least write down what you want ahead of time because you’ll probably have communication problems otherwise.

Here’s what we got:

Chinese Sausage Over Rice (Run Chang 潤腸 La Chang 臘腸):

One of the things they are known for are their Chinese sausage.  The reddish sausage (la chang 臘腸) is the typical Cantonese style sausage; its pretty fatty and has a sweet taste to it (I absolutely love these).  The dark brown sausage (run chang 潤腸) is a liver sausage that isn’t sweet, has a slight liver flavor to it (although it’s not strong at all) and is a little drier than the la chang.  The sausages here are well made and have good flavor and texture.  You eat them over rice with a slightly sweet thicker soy sauce (probably homemade) poured over it.  Chinese sausage with rice is true comfort food for me and these were really satisfying for me.  8.75/10

Snake Soup (She Geng 蛇羹):

Snake soup is actually supposed to be a winter soup, but they serve it all year round here.  It’s a thicker soup with a lot of snake meat in it and they also put in these big crunchy fried wonton skins.  The soup is savory, but reasonably mild tasting.  So, how is snake meat? Does it taste like chicken?  Well, it kind of does.  Texturally it shreds up like chicken although maybe a little more tender.  Flavor-wise, the meat is mild and clean tasting and isn’t gamey whatsoever.  It’s sort of surprising because I always imagine reptile meat as having some strong gamey flavor, but this doesn’t.  I also really like the crunchiness of the fried wonton skins in contrast with the thickness of the soup.  Overall, it’s a pretty tasty soup and definitely worth trying even for the less adventurous.  8.5/10

Sweet & Sour Pork:

We wanted a dish for the table and I saw this on a few tables, so we ordered this.  It was typical sweet and sour pork, but cooked well.  The sauce wasn’t overly sweet or gloppy and the meat was fried nicely, not too greasy or over-battered.  It’s not a revelation, but it was solidly good.  8/10

Overall, this is an enjoyable place to eat at and probably the type of place I would stop by a lot for a quick meal if I lived in Hong Kong.  I definitely want to come back next time for their double boiled soup as my friend told me they do a good job on those here as well.

Address:
G/F, 30 Cochrane Street, Central
中環閣麟街30號地下
Phone: 2543 1032