Old Town Hong Kong Cuisine, Haymarket

Old Town is just a bit fancier than your regular Hong Kong diner in Chinatown, with a fun fitout that mixes traditional elements of Chinese diner decor (think simple wooden furniture and barbecued meat hanging in glass windows) with exposed brick walls and snapshots of Hong Kong streetscapes plastered on some of the walls.

It’s a bustling place, but luckily we have no trouble securing a table for two on a public holiday. I’ve decided to get down to basics at Old Town to see if it lives up to the billing as having authentic Hong Kong dishes, by ordering a Honey BBQ Pork Egg Noodle in Soup, which combines 2 things that are quintessentially Hong Kong in my mind.

Honey BBQ Pork Egg Noodle in Soup, $12.80

The food comes out quick and fast, and I’m pretty happy with the generous portion of Honey BBQ Pork (char siu) on the side of an equally generous bowl of clear hot broth that contains plenty of egg noodles with steamed Chinese vegies on top. The broth and chewy egg noodles are decent and comforting, but I find some pieces of the BBQ pork are a bit dry, although there are juicier pieces of honeyed BBQ meat here and there.

Panfried Pork Buns with Sesame, $12.80

We have also ordered a plate of Panfried Pork Buns with Sesame to share. I’m a big fan of this type of dim sim, though I usually get these in the various Shanghainese restaurants around town rather than the Hong Kong eateries. They look promising and aren’t too bad, but they lack the flavoursome soup inside that their Shanghainese counterparts are famed for and the bun itself is thicker than I was expecting.

On the upside, we enjoyed our Iced Honey Lemon drinks, which taste just like the real deal that you get at Hong Kong cafes.

Iced Honey Lemon, $4

Old Town is a nice addition to the Chinatown dining scene and they do have quite a few interesting trendy dishes on the menu (like the Peking Duck and Roast Pork Buns) which I am keen to come back to try, as well as your more conventional Hong Kong dim sim and noodle/rice dishes. Not every dish is a hit here, but they do a decent job of serving up fast, affordable and tasty dishes in a nicer environment than your average Chinatown diner.

Old Town Hong Kong Cuisine
10A Dixon Street, Sydney NSW 2000
Ph: (02) 9264 3888

Old Town Hong Kong Cuisine on Urbanspoon

4 Comments

Leave a Reply to Nessy EaterCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.