Guava is getting crushed, again: Mak Mun Kee

This is my vote for the best meal I’ve had in Hong Kong (Australian Dairy Co. would be a close second). It also happens to be right beside Australian Dairy Co. as well. Which means you can get 2 spectacular meals with only 1 bus ride without the need to walk at all.

Mak Mun Kee is a similar shop to Mak’s Noodle Ltd (but they are not the same shop), i.e. they are famous for their wonton noodles. Both places also have other things such as beef brisket noodles and the like. What’s different is Mak Mun Kee is also famous for their pork trotters.

I actually read about this place about 2 weeks ago, when I was looking up Australian Dairy Co., and although it had good reviews as well, I dismissed it because it was ‘just another noodle place’. The decision to come to this place came about when I was rewatching that episode of Anthony Bourdain (and discovering all the things about Wong Chi Kee and Lin Heung (post yet to come) after I went to those places) and one of the places he went was to have beef brisket noodles (Long Kee in Mongkok). So I was trying to look up that place on the net and I read one comment that said that the best beef brisket noodle that that person had ever had was in Mak Mun Kee.

(Anthony Bourdain actually came to Hong Kong twice. He went to Mak’s Noodle Ltd on his first trip here (as I mentioned in that post), but on his second trip here, he went to Long Kee.)

And since I still haven’t actually had proper beef brisket noodles in Hong Kong yet (the one from Mak’s Noodle Ltd was unspectacular), I decided that I had to try out both Mak Mun Kee and Lung Kee.

I asked for their english menu just to be safe, but I already knew what I wanted. Beef brisket noodles and pork trotters.

I read somewhere else that they use nam yue sauce to make this (something grandmother also uses), so the taste wasn’t unfamiliar to me, but it was just damn good! It was not too tender yet not too tough or tendony (I’ve had those where the tendons get stuck in between your teeth). There were 4 fairly large pieces in the bowl, and I shared it with the guy who’s jumper you can see peeking out above the trotters.

And their beef brisket noodles (we each had one bowl). Wah. So good! And they even have some tendon in it as well.

SO GOOD! The tendons were so tender, and the beef was very good as well. “This made my day,” my friend declared.

Mak’s Noodle Ltd can’t hold a candle to this. And neither can Long Kee, for that matter. No fight. I take back my statement that the sauce from the beef brisket interferes with the clear soup of the noodles.

The noodles need the beef brisket in them to make them spectacular.

Being the greedy guy that I am, I came back another day, and polished off the same whole bowl of pork trotters by myself, had a bowl of beef brisket noodles (damn good!), and because I liked the tendon so much, I ordered another bowl of beef tendon noodle.