11 Best Restaurants in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong

The menu at this trendy restaurant and bar brings together the East and the West—the Japanese kitchen plates up fresh sashimi, tempura, and innovative sushi rolls, while the restaurant’s Italian side offers traditional risottos and pastas with a modern twist. The Japanese offerings usually fare better than the Italian ones, but the thing really worth going to Aqua for is the superb view of the Hong Kong skyline. You might want to just stop in for a drink—the bar stays open until 1 am on Friday and Saturday.

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.

A table at this Michelin-starred Indian restaurant is notoriously hard to get, but if you manage to snag one, try the ice cream cone-shaped baked samosa and the juicy and flavorful black pepper chicken tikka. Be sure to pair your meal with one of the craft cocktails that utilize fragrant spices like cumin, cardamom, and chai masala.

For Taiwanese cuisine that blends tradition with modernity, head to Check-In Taipei. Tucked inside Harbour City mall, the restaurant offers eye-catching and comfortable interiors while serving up unique twists on Taiwanese classics, such as the Japanese eel on top of a cheesy egg crepe and dan dan beef noodles.

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.

Unlike some of the more common Japanese eateries, Rakuen serves authentic Okinawan cuisine. Start with the umi-budo—an interesting variety of sea kelp shaped like bunches of grapes (the bubble-like appearance has also won it its “green caviar” nickname). Other regional specialties include the homemade peanut tofu, which, despite the name, is not a tofu dish but a gelatinized mixture of peanuts that has a chewy but firm texture and discerning nutty flavor, which is drawn out by a drizzling of soy sauce. Okinawan ingredients—such as bitter gourd and squid-ink noodles—are found throughout the menu, and the melt-in-the-mouth grilled ox tongue is a definite must-order.

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.

Health-conscious diners will appreciate the simple Shanghainese vegetarian food served at this popular restaurant in the One Peking Road tower. The menu revels in its vegetarianism, rather than trying to emulate meat; highlights include the Golden Treasure Cold Platter, which includes delicious sweet gluten with mushrooms; the Shanghai-style cold noodles with seven different sauces; and bean-curd dumplings. Good, too, are the sweet pan-fried cakes. 

Against the romantic backdrop of Hong Kong’s twinkling harbor, this is the top spot in town for oyster lovers. More than 20 varieties are flown in daily and displayed around the horseshoe oyster bar, ready for shucking. The staff cheerfully explains the characteristics of the available mollusks and guides you to ones to suit your taste. Also on the menu is an excellent lobster bisque, as well as clams, mussels, crab, and fish in various preparations. The Dungeness crab cake is another standout, made with sweet and succulently delicious crabmeat. Wine aficionados are also spoiled for choice here, with the extensive wine selection that lines the walls.

At the Mira Hotel’s flagship restaurant, seasonal ingredients are turned into creative European dishes designed to impress. The half roasted yellow chicken---a mainstay in the rotating menu---is a must-try. Aside from à la carte options, the restaurant offers a 4- to 10-course degustation menu inspired by global flavors and ingredients. Another bonus is the extensive wine list, which features some of the world’s finest vintages at incredibly reasonable prices.