13 Best Restaurants in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong

It’s easy to see why Hutong is a hot spot: it has some of the most imaginative northern Chinese cuisine in town. What's more, the beautifully decorated dining room sits atop H Zentre, overlooking the entire festival of lights that is the Hong Kong island skyline.

This restaurant specializes in coconut chicken hot pot made from fresh coconut water, with tender chickens raised on coconut meat. Open 24 hours a day, the shop also offers a wide range of beef, meat balls, noodles, and other hot pot bites---all at a reasonable price.

This place fires up the grill with skewered items that draw flavor inspiration from Sichuan. The menu is extensive, capping in at more than 100 different choices on any given day (including daily and seasonal specials). Grilled fish is perfect with beer, as are the tsukune chicken meatballs. When in season, order grilled oysters, clams, and other seafood items. The folks at Chuan Shao also serve grilled banana and pineapple for dessert. The restaurant is open until late, and there’s plenty of beer, so anyone staying at a hotel in the area might just want to keep this place in mind.

Originally from Taiwan, this global restaurant chain is most famous for its expertly made dumplings. The place is serious about its craft—each dumpling is made from a specified amount of dough and kneaded to a uniform thinness to ensure maximum quality control. The signature steamed xiao long bao dumplings arrive piping hot at the table, filled with delectable fatty pork and slurpfuls of flavorful broth. Anyone with a sweet tooth should try the taro-paste dumpling. The excellent food is paired with VIP treatment from the friendly staff, making Din Tai Fung completely worthy of its immense popularity.

This buzzing Chinese restaurant specializes in Beijing and Huaiyang cuisine and draws a following for its upscale atmosphere, Mongolian mutton hot pot, and stellar appetizers (the smoked eggs and crispy eel). Try the hand-cut noodles, traditional Peking duck, and award-winning combo dishes such as wok-fried crabmeat, rock lobster, and salted egg yolk served on rice crackers.

If you’re looking for stellar Cantonese cuisine, this is the place for you. The chefs serve a range of modern classics made from the freshest ingredients and influenced by their reverence for natural flavors. There are excellent—and expensive—dishes on the menu like double-boiled bird’s nest and braised abalone, but the humbler dishes like marinated pork knuckle and deep-fried frog legs steal the show. Hoi King Heen is a great dinner destination, and the lunchtime dim sum menu is also worth checking out.

Anyone seeking an authentic hot pot experience need look no farther than Ko Lau Wan. Locals flock here for the tender beef and seafood that you cook at your table in a piping-hot pot of broth. The soup selection is quite extensive, but the satay broth and the fish stock with crab are particularly tasty. The owner comes from a fishing village in the New Territories, so there’s no wonder the cuttlefish, shrimp balls, sea urchin, amberjack, and abalone are all so tantalizingly fresh. The adventurous should try the geoduck, a giant clam popular among Hong Kongers, which can be eaten raw as sashimi with soy sauce and wasabi or slightly cooked in soup.

Previously named Yan Toh Heen, this renowned Cantonese restaurant located in the Regent Hong Kong has an elegant dining room against expansive harbor views and food that is at the top of its class. Exquisite is hardly the word for the decor, which mixes contemporary with the traditional and encompasses gorgeous details like jade-color place settings. Dim sum is done well here during lunch, and if you’re looking for more extravagant dishes, there’s a vast selection of seafood that includes seasonal crab, poached lobster, and sea whelk. Some dishes, like Peking duck, need to be ordered at least a day ahead. Note that sleeveless shirts, shorts, and sandals are not allowed for men.

Bubble-shaped egg waffles are a local specialty in Hong Kong, and Lee Keung Kee offers a delicious version. The waffles here are crisp on the outside but soft and cottony on the inside.

This Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant in Rosewood Hong Kong is spacious and glamorous, serving beloved classics such as Peking duck and char siu, as well as regional Cantonese delicacies like deep-fried pigeon and minced fish soup. Three different eight-course tasting menus are available, as well as a set dim sum menu.

The floral interior makes this place look like something out of 1950s Beijing. The Peking duck, however, is a showstopper (it might be the best in town), and you'll see an old-school crowd enjoying it as well as noodles and stir-fried wok meat dishes.

This is one of the oldest restaurants in Hong Kong and also one of the first places to serve “soy sauce” Hong Kong–style Western cuisine. The decor, staff, and menu seem to have remained unchanged since day one, adding to the nostalgic charm of the place. Steaks are served to dramatic effect on sizzling iron plates and brought to the table by waiters clad in waistcoats. Other menu highlights include the baked Portuguese chicken, the near-perfect stir-fried rice noodles with beef (a classic Hong Kong dish), chicken wings doused in "Swiss sauce" (which has no real Swiss associations), and the enormous baked soufflé that takes 20 minutes to prepare and at least three people to devour.

This restaurant serves good Shanghainese fare at reasonable prices. The signature xiao long bao (soup dumplings) are great, and the honey ham with crispy bean-curd skin wrapped in soft bread is delicious and authentic. Be sure to try the tofu dumpling—a unique dish that has mixed greens enveloped in thin sheets of silken bean curd. (This requires advance ordering.) Also not to be missed is the Shanghai-style doughnut on the dessert menu—it’s a deep-fried sphere of whipped and fluffy egg whites stuffed with red bean and bananas.