Cheong Fat 昌發泰國粉麵屋 - When Your Service is This Bad...

Rating: 

When your service is this BAD, your food better be extremely GOOD. Unfortunately the food is just mediocre and doesn't justify the wait staff's bad attitude.

Ever since our last adventure to Kowloon City, we wanted to try some other restaurants in this area again. Searching on OpenRice, I came upon this shop which is pretty high in the rankings. I love anything noodle soup, so when I read that this shop is known for that, I came here to try just that. 


We came here on Sunday around lunch time and were able to get seats right away. The cashier just told us to grab any seat so we sat down at an empty table with 2 glasses of water already there. There were no menu on the walls or at our table, so I didn't know how to order. There were only pictures on the wall, but it doesn't say what it is or how much is it. We waited and waited for anyone to serve us, but no one came by to give us a menu or even switch the used glasses of water. I never got a menu, but knew what I wanted to order from reading the recommendations online so I decided to just order anyway. I said excuse me in Cantonese to one of the female wait staff and she took one look at me and continued doing what she was doing. As I waited some more and no one is paying any attention to us, I called out to the same lady again and she yelled at me to just shout out what I want to order. She's like 5 feet away and clearing some dishes! Is it too much to ask for her to come by and take our orders like normal restaurants? Okay fine. I proceeded to order the duck noodle soup, boat tour (pig noodle soup), and shrimp cake. All the while she didn't write a single thing down. Well lo and behold, when our food came, she got our order WRONG. She brought some other kind of noodle soup and I told her that's not what we order. Finally she brought out the duck noodle soup first. 

The duck noodle came with pieces of duck and pig blood with flat rice noodles. The broth was just average and not aromatic. It's like an average broth you get at a fishball noodle shop except that the color is darker. I've had duck noodle soup where the broth was richer and more herbal-like so in comparison this was not impressive at all. The duck was lean and tough and the pig blood was average - really nothing special here. I had to keep adding spicy sauce to make it interesting enough to finish it. (HK$30)


Next the "boat tour" noodle soup came, which is just supposed to be a random selection of pig parts like pig kidney, pork meat and meatball. From what I read online, I knew this should come with kidney. But the first bowl they gave us did not contain ANY pig kidney. We confirmed with the waitress that what she gave us is the boat tour and she said yes. When asked why isn't there any kidney then, she then took it back and mumbled something like maybe they ran out or something. WTH?!? I'm not sure if they were trying to cheat us or really just forgot. Finally she came back with some kidney added into the noodle soup. For some reason, this noodle soup looked half full compared to the duck one. The soup was just bland and tasteless, and the pork meat was lean and tough. The worst was the kidney which looked pretty messed up. We have eaten a lot of pig kidneys before and never seen ones that looked like what they gave us. There were some pieces that were still red like it was not cooked thoroughly or bruised up or something. We were afraid to eat it because well...that's how you get sick. At that point, it was also pretty hopeless to tell the wait staff because obviously they don't give a hoot about their customers. We just set it aside and hoped we don't get food poisoning. (HK$30)
Lastly, our shrimp cakes came. There were about 8 half pieces with some sweet and sour sauce for dipping. The outside was pretty crispy and the inside was quite chewy. It's a bit too thick though and not enough shrimp flavor. Obviously they added a lot more flour to shrimp ratio to get to this proportion, but I rather they shrink the sizes down so it will actually taste good. (HK$48)

Verdict - with their really horrible customer service, ghetto environment, and average food, I would not recommend wasting your money here as there are so many other better restaurants for Thai food in HK.  

Cheong Fat 
G/F, 27 South Wall Road, Kowloon City 
2382 5998

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