Whenever I'm back in Hong Kong, I always try to fit in at least one meal at a HK-style cafe. This type of place is very common throughout the city. They tend to serve a huge, expansive variety of casual Chinese food as well as some HK versions of Western cuisines (think steak or baked spaghetti). It's also at these places that you find good HK-style milk tea, which is hard to get outside. On a hot and humid HK afternoon, nothing beats a strong, ice cold milk tea. My dad and I grabbed lunch the other day at Tsim Sha Tsui branch of Cousin Cafe, which has a few locations around HK. Their menu is of course ginormous and covers all the usual HK cafe bases, but they also have a few unusual items.
beef brisket - HK$28
A very standard item is beef brisket, which Chinese people like to eat in a variety of ways. Usually you'll find it with noodles, but we just had it plain. A pretty decent rendition here; nicely braised and flavorful.
pork neck meat with fried noodles - HK$68
They listed this noodle dish under "fried sky noodles" and we were curious as to what that meant. It turned out to be an excellent fried thin noodle with a tasty soy base. The pork was very tender and slightly fatty. Great stuff.
seafood with rice in pail - HK$78
The reason we actually went to Cousin was because my dad wanted to show me this rice in a pail dish with eel and chicken cartilege. Sadly, they didn't have eel that day, so we settled for this seafood version. It was alright, but neither of us really liked the thick wet sauce (the eel/cartilege version is dry, according to my dad). Decent but a bit disappointing.
Cousin is actually a bit more expensive than the usual HK cafe, but we did pick out a couple of more unusual items. You can certainly stuff yourself here for less. I really did want to try that eel rice though... Maybe next time.
Oh, and by the way, they make a pretty solid milk tea. :)