Hong Kong Diner – Number One Restaurant

I’ve had more dinners at Edinburgh’s Yum Yum HK Diner than any other restaurant anywhere. It’s a charming little slightly hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop operation, dominated by a huge screen showing undubbed Chinese TV which distracts the staff and leads the eye away from the view into the kitchen below. Otherwise the room is pretty simple, and the most significant Chinese decorations are the tables and stools themselves. It’s tight for space and not the kind of place one would tend to linger in, even if they didn’t close at 8pm to go get their own dinner and family time. What really lifts it well above the run-of-the-mill cheap and cheerful Chinese is the laudable Chinese delicatessen section of the menu. The delicacies are apparently intended more for the palate of the Chinese diners, but the owner has given up asking if we are sure we want to order duck tongue or ox tendon or whatever else she considers an unlikely order for squeamish Western tastes; yes, we are sure, we want to boldly go where probably quite a lot of gastronomic tourists have gone before us.

On our visit to HK Diner last Friday, we tried Steamed Rice with Beef and Bitter Melon. The main attraction was the bitter melon, which the proprietress grows in her own garden. The beef was very soft, though, and we couldn’t help reflecting that not only was it better than the beef curry we had recently at Dusit, it was also little more than a third of the price. As for the bitter melon, it lived up to its name; the texture was what you’d expect from cooked melon, and the bitterness lurks in wait for the back of your palate, allowing you to think, “that wasn’t bitter – oh – hang on - ”.

My favourite dish at the Diner, which has become a sort of comfort food, is the lamb belly hot pot. This is an exercise in textures. The melting chunks of lamb, the bits of ginger masquerading as lumps of meat but instead offering crunch, and the smooth bits of Chinese cabbage are but foils to the real attraction, the ribbed strips of belly lining that look like sauce-soiled parchment; what you’d expect a Shakespeare first folio to look like if you cooked it. I recommended this to my Korean student Sung Hee, whose apparently approving verdict was that it reminded him of eating dog. I also told Sung Hee that we had a puppy at home, and he asked how old it was. Nine weeks, I told him. “Ah, nine weeks, most adorable age. After that, not so adorable. But no problem. Still tasty.”