Moon Koon Restaurant, Happy Valley Racecourse, Hong Kong

It was Mother's Day in Hong Kong a couple of Sundays ago and I went for lunch with my wife's family, treating my mother-in-law for a dim sum lunch at Moon Koon restaurant that is situated in the racecourse.

There was a party of six of us and we booked a window seat that gives you excellent views of the racecourse. This is good if you are dining and want to watch the horseracing at the same time but there was no racing happening that day to distract us from our food.

The glazed facade on one side makes the restaurant very airy and whilst it was busy, it did not seem like a crowded place. Tables are smartly laid out and they have a nice cutlery holder for your chopsticks and spoon, with a little horseshoe shaped rest for your spoon as shown below.

The table setting

We ordered a lot of dishes and this is what we ate:

The first to arrive was a savoury item, being the Chicken and Mushroom rice shown below. Nicely steamed pieces of  chicken and Chinese mushroom in a pot of plain rice was a generous portion that everyone got to have a taste of.

Chicken & Mushroom Rice

The next dishes where the Taro Cake and the Turnip Cake. The Taro has a bland floury texture about it for its filling and edible enough but not something I would order personally. The fried Turnip Cake was really good. This one was an XO sauce variant so that gave the darker colour and spicier taste.

Taro Cake and Turnip Cake

We ordered he classic barbecued pork buns 'Char Siu Bao' and Egg Tartlets, shown below. The former had the usual fluffy dough and sweet pork filling. The latter was a delicious little tart, with light flaky pastry and warm, sweet egg filling. 

Clockwise from left: Char Siu Bao and Egg Tartlets

The picture below shows three traditional dishes in Lotus Rice, Siu Mai and Har Gow from left to right in the foreground. The rice was fine, it was the glutinous kind, steamed with mushrooms and other finely chopped ingredients. Siu Mai had a decent pork filling with prawn on top and Har Gow had a sizeable prawn filling wrapped in the translucent pastry.

From Left (in foreground): Lotus Rice, Siu Mai, Har Gow.

Below shows rice rolls and fried dumplings. The rice roll wrapped around the a deep fried 'doughstick' and when dipped in soy sauce, it gave it a better flavour to this light dish. The dumplings had a flavoursome mixture of pork and chive filling, with a slightly thicker pastry. Please note the turnip cake seems to be turning up on all the pictures; the dish was well received by us but because of the amount of food we took our time in finishing the whole plate.

From Left: Rice Roll, Turnip Cake (again); Fried Dumpling

One of the sweet dishes we had was Steamed Cake, which looked massive when it turned up on the table. It was cut perfectly into six portions enough for eveyone. Although big in portion size it was light and spongy and this one had a hint of coffee in its mixture, which was a nice change from the norm.

Steamed Cake

As with dim sum meals, some dishes are really tasty and some are so-so but that is the varied nature of this type of lunching. None were awful and all were nicely presented but they could have had a slightly bigger selection. My favourites were the Egg Tartlets and the Turnip Cake. The waiters were friendly and served us efficiently when giving us our food, refilling teapots and clearing dishes.

Scores:
Food: 3/5
Presentation: 4/5
Service: 3/5
Setting: 4/5

Overall: 14/20.

Total Bill: $580, about £8 a head.

I ate: All of the above.

I drank: Lung Jeng (Dragon's Well) tea.

I wore: Respectable enough clothes for Mothering Sunday.