This is post #42, part of my #50PostsIn50Days personal challenge to document my first 100 days in Hong Kong. Other posts in this series may be found at the bottom of the original post.
Who doesn't love hot pot on a chilly winter's day?
Although winter here in Hong Kong is nowhere near the (literally) freezing temperatures I used to endure in Boston, it still does get quite chilly here. Consider that most homes (including ours) don't have central heat, chilly damp days actually feel quite bone-chilling.
I've been loving having hot pots during these cold days, and our new favorite place is Megan's Kitchen, conveniently located in Wan Chai not too far from our new apartment.
Megan's Kitchen is predominantly a hot pot restaurant, though it does have special Cantonese tasting menus you can pre-book for events and such. For most walk-in visitors, however, hot pot is the only option. The restaurant has won its fair share of awards, including receiving Bib Gourmande status from the Michelin Guide as well as being listed under Hong Kong Tatler's list of Best Restaurants.
They are famous for their contemporary and creative broths. We didn't go wild this time and ordered two broths: Sichuan Spicy Tofu broth ($168 HKD) and Coriander and Preserved Duck Egg ($98 HKD). Some more unusual ones on the menu include tomato and crab soup, fresh lobster borsch soup, apple and corn soup with spareribs, and double boiled French spring chicken stuffed with porcini mushroom and quinoa. You can see the whole list in my photos of the menus here and here.
Once you place your order, it's time to make your sauce! The portable sauce bar is kind of fun. It was hard for me to choose which ones I wanted, so I ended up trying a bit of each one! My favorite turned out to be the deep fried garlic chips - yummmmmm.
The negative here (compared to a place that has a dedicated help-yourself sauce bar, like Golden Valley), is that if you run out of a particular type of condiment, it's a bit harder to get more sauce. They only bring the sauce caddy over in the beginning. Once you start eating, there's no room at the table since the hot pot takes up a lot of the room.
Not a huge deal, since I didn't run out of sauce. I'm sure if I had asked for more sauce, they would have brought over the caddy again.
Depending on the size of your group, you'll get a certain number of free "appetizers." Since there were two of us, we got two appetizers: century eggs with pickled ginger and pickled cucumber.
Megan's Kitchen offers ALL types of premium meats. We went a bit crazy and ordered both A5 grade sirloin ($468 HKD) as well as Kurobuta (black) pork ($268 HKD). Both were FANTASTIC.
I really liked how they provided the special sesame sauce that typically goes with Wagyu shabu to go with the A5 beef. It was DIVINE.
Here's our crazy spread. I love the attention to detail, even in the cute little stars carved into the mushrooms.
In general, prices are not cheap but the quality is very high. We tried some fun, more unusual things, like abalone mushroom ($48) or their "hand beaten" meat ball platter ($118).
One cool item I had never seen before was the Layer Beancurd Sheet ($68), which consisted of a deep fried block of tofu that actually had several layers inside. It was so fun!
I'm a huge fan of the crunchy texture of konnyaku noodles, so I had to get some.
Megan's Kitchen Hong Kong - General Thoughts
Overall we really enjoyed ourselves at Megan's Kitchen. The service was fantastic and the food was really, really good. We loved how we could order such luxurious meats and creative broths together with a great bottle of wine. They do have a pretty nice wine selection. Additionally, they also allow BYOB for (I think) $200 HKD corkage fee.
I will say that the ambiance was a bit hectic. We ate on the earlier side, so there were definitely some crying babies and some pre-teen boys playing video games at another table. Even though the food is high-end and the service was high-end as well, the environment was decidedly family-friendly.
Be prepared to pay for such high quality and expensive ingredients. I think we knew we were getting top notch ingredients so we weren't shocked by the bill. Otherwise, compared to a lot of other hot pot places, this one is more expensive than average.
I still think it's become one of our favorite hot pot places. So if we're in the mood to splurge on high-end hot pot, we'll gladly come back here again.
Megan's Kitchen Hong Kong
5/F, Lucky Centre
165-171 Wan Chai Road
Wan Chai
+852 28668305
[…] with high end wagyu beef to creative broths that you could only find in Hong Kong. Our favorite is Megan’s Kitchen in Wan Chai, which offers an excellent variety of high quality ingredients (hello Wagyu and […]