Sarah N.
Yelp
To the uninitiated, the Queen Street Cooked Food Market is the Hong Kong version of a food court (to state it simply and noting that this is just one, for there are countless of these cooked food centers all over Hong Kong). Not to go into the history of cooked food markets or how they came about (you can google all those nuggets of info), but this spot contains 6 food eateries, albeit set up in a food court type setting. In order of my personal preference of best to not good:
1) Traditional Beijing Dumpling House (dumplings, no menu in English)
2) Chautari Restaurant (Indian)
3) ABC Kitchen (Italian)
4) Chan Choi Kee (Chinese)
5) Chiu Chow Dumplings (dumplings and some Chinese food, no menu in English)
6) Thai Vietname Cuisine (Vietnamese)
***You can look up each restaurant in Yelp (seeing this is my hood, I have pretty much Yelped them all, so I know there is something written about them).
The entrance is across from 7-11,up the escalators, through the heavy metal door. When you walk in, it can be a touch intimidating because the layout is kind of a cluster. When you walk in, you walk kind of into the area of Chan Choi Kee (the Chinese place) and their tables. If you walk around, you will see then Chautari (the Indian place) and their tables and so on and so forth. It is often hard to tell which tables go to each restaurant. The restaurant kitchens are lined up on the outside and all their tables for sitting are on the inside of the space. If you want to eat Indian, but are not sure where to sit, kind of walk over to the Indian place and get the attention of the staff person and they will tell you where to sit. Or if you are not sure what you want, walk up and ask to see a menu. Do the same for any of the other restaurants there. The Chinese place has the most tables, ABC probably has the second most tables and then Chautari has the third most tables. I think they dole them out based on volume of business...the busiest spots get the most seats.
It is not cool to sit at the Chinese places tables, but be ordering Italian from ABC. But with that said, if you sit down in the appropriate tables of the restaurant you choose and in addition to what you are eating from them, you want to order something from a different restaurant too, then that is cool. As long as you are eating something from the establishment you are occupying real estate from, then this is OK. My husband and I are guilty of doing this often. All the restaurants tend to work together a bit on this, just make sure they get back their table setting and cutlery when you depart.
In full disclosure, the place is "kind of" clean...I say this loosely, in the ballpark of maybe a B- for a grade on clean. It is more of a old school cluster with chaos than being concerned about "clean clean" really for me. Also, I have never used the restroom here, so I cannot attest if Mr. Clean is present.
My husband and I like the Queen Street Cooked Food Center and find ourselves there for a meal several days in a week.