Kau Kee is not your upscale restaurant but its patrons includes almost all the rich and famous in Hongkong. I have no idea when it became a tourist attraction but now, it has even made it to the Wikipedia.

The picture shows its “new” shop situated in an old district in Central, Hongkong. The “new” shop was in operation since mid 90s. Prior to that, they were operating just across the street as a sidewalk stall. When I was a small kid back in the early 60s, my mom would go out every night at about midnight with a little tin pot to buy my dad’s favourite Beef Brisket Noodle in Clear Soup – that was the earliest Kau Kee I can remember.

Kau Kee is renowned for their Beef Brisket 清湯牛腩 and service. My father loved it. I loved it and my children loved it. We left Hongkong for over 6 years now and when we occasionally talked about the things we missed most since we left, Kau Kee Beef Brisket would always be mentioned as one.

First, the food. Kau Kee only do one dish – Beef Brisket. There were two choices for the noodle Soup - clear or curry. They also offered a special higher priced variant called 爽 腩 which literally means crispy beef brisket. The higher priced special would normally be sold out by around 3 pm (they opened around midday) and you should consider yourself lucky if you could order one.

During lunch time, there would always be a long queue outside the shop. Many of these people were well dressed and working in one of the most expensive commercial districts in the world (Kau Kee’s location is just outside the Central business area). If they would spend 30 minutes of their one hour lunch break queuing up, cramped into a seat designed for two small kids with another full grown adult, wait 10 minutes for a bowl of Beef Brisket noodle, consume it in 5 minutes, walk from and back to their office in 15 minutes and still find it worthwhile, maybe it does tell us something about the food. In the evening, there would be another queue. Although not as long as the queue during lunch time, this queue would be mainly made up of Mercedes, BMW and Lexus with a few Porsches and Jaguars in-between and occasionally a Ferrari or two.

Second, the service. Simply put, you cannot find any restaurant, shop, food stall anywhere in the world that offer a worse service. Yes, “worse”. If you find the service at their “new” shop appalling, bear in mind that they did already make some improvements after the relocation. During the days when they were operating as a side-walk stall, they didn’t even bother to put a pair of chopsticks on the table after you had taken a seat. I didn’t know what to do when I first ate in their stall and had to watch and learn the beef brisket etiquette from others. Here what should be done: grab a pair of chopsticks from an open container in the middle of the table, get up and go wash the chopsticks in a pot of boiling water besides the guy who is making the noodles. Why wash? The chopsticks are in an open container and have likely been attracting some flies, bugs, dirt since they are put in place. Why the hot water pot? Not 100% sure but the water is for the soup and maybe this is why the soup is so delicious.

And seriously, one of the reasons why Kau Kee is so successful lies in their selection of brisket. The beef brisket used by Kau Kee is always with good marbling – white fat and a deep color in the meat. The layer of fat is important as it tends to eliminate the tough and gristly texture often associated with beef brisket. The special higher priced version of Kau Kee brisket contains a greater amount of fat evenly distributed throughout the meat.