Kau Kee Restaurant

> Location : G/F 21 Gough Street, Central, Hong Kong
> Cuisine : Beef brisket clear soup Noodle
> Tel. # : (852) 2815-0123
> Website : N/A

Just up Wing Kut Street to the stone steps, there lies a hidden treasure if you're a soup noodle fanatic. No, we're not even talking about Chung Kee which serves the best wonton soup noodle ever! Up the stone steps a bit and you take a right into Gough Street, lies a street with a lot of different restaurants (Thai, western, Indian, Chinese, etc) and a "dai pai dong."

Yet, one place in particular made a lot noise for their beef brisket clear soup noodle if not just within the Central / Sheung Wan area, but of the entire Hong Kong! Kau Kee opens Mondays to Saturdays from 12:30 PM to 4:30 PM. Especially on weekdays, even before 12:30, there's already a pretty LONG line waiting for it to open! So like everybody else, I waited like a kid going into a candy store...

The success to Kau Kee's beef brisket clear soup noodle is through its whole package. The Beef brisket is prepared daily to give it its soft, tender sensation. Not only does it melt in your mouth, they cook it in such a way you can still distinguish the beef taste from the marinara. A lot of the times in beef brisket dishes or any type of meat that relies on heavy or long marinating, the actual meat taste is lost through the process. However at Kau Kee, this is not the case. The second factor that makes a lot of critics love this place is the clear soup base. My very best guess for some of the ingredients are turnips and pig bones. The soup is pleasant scented and very sweet to the mouth. You simply have to try it to know how wonderful it is! Last but not least (to me comparable to the previous two factors), is the noodle. You can generally choose from rice noodle, hoi fun (flat noodle) or regular lai mien. For most customers favorite, lai mien is the best choice. Kau Kee's lai mien is very chewy but not to the extent like its rubbery. This makes your mouth do some work yet it's work that's very much worth it!

However, as I like to say often on this food blog, consistency is the key. The previous paragraphs and what I am about to type is a separate visit. So, I found myself craving some Kau Kee at around 3:30 PM. I brought a friend with me telling him how great the stuff was! When our bowls came and half way into my second experience, I found myself craving for water and that MSG/oily sensation in my throat. When I finished, I felt embarrassed as my friend didn't uphold my recommendation. Yes, he had the same sensation as me. So I asked a few people who had experience with Kau Kee about the problem and it seems like as the freshly made ingredients sits longer, the oil excretes from the beef into the clear soup. Well, that is one possibility. The other is the restaurant ran out of soup base and as a last minute attempt, made soup using MSG to get the similar flavoring as their freshly prepared soup.

Whatever the issue was, I was turned off by my second experience. Yet, my suggestion is, if you want the good stuff, GO EARLY! When it gets late, I don't recommend going. Perhaps, it was just one of those unlucky experiences but for me, I'm going with my own suggestion. In the end, I take nothing away from how Kau Kee got its reputation from. They certainly make some seriously good clear soup beef brisket noodle (on a good day). My verdict would have been higher, but with what happened in my second experience, I give Kau Kee...

< 4 out of 5 >