Review | Sorrowful rice with char siu and fried egg for under US$9 at Men Wah Bing Teng rivals famous dish
- In Stephen Chow’s 1996 comedy The God of Cookery, the ‘sorrowful rice’ brought tears of joy; at Men Wah Bing Teng in Causeway Bay, it was not far off
- But service at the new location was well below par, with us waiting more than an hour for our meal because the servers missed our orders twice
Founded in the 1970s, Men Wah Bing Teng has been a Hong Kong institution for several generations and has more than a dozen branches around the city. We recently tried out one of the newest, located in Causeway Bay.
We arrived at 1pm right in the middle of lunchtime, but it didn’t take long for us to get seats.
The speciality is “sorrowful rice” (HK$68 for the set) – a recreation of the famous dish featured in Stephen Chow’s 1996 comedy The God of Cookery – which includes slices of barbecue pork on a bed of rice with a fried egg on top. In the movie, the judge of the cooking competition sheds tears of joy after tasting the dish.
The freshly roasted barbecue pork (char siu) in the version we tried was juicy and tender. The egg, cooked sunny side up, had a liquid yolk that flowed out and slightly soaked into the Thai rice. Served with home-made light soy sauce, the dish was so good we couldn’t help gobbling up every last grain of rice.
We regretted ordering the ginger soup with instant noodles and pig’s liver. The thick slices of ginger were not enough to mask the strong smell of the liver. We did like the scrambled eggs and buttered toast that came with the set (HK$60).
