Wineshark HK Restaurant Review - Yau Yuen Siu Tsui 有緣小敍

Located in Jordan, this restaurant specializes in the Shaanxi cuisine, which reminded me on the time when I visited Xi'an many years back. Visiting the restaurant the second time after a number of years, there was not much changes on the inside, with wooden tables and chairs and some Chinese-style decorations. One can also see through the kitchen where the noodles and some other dishes are prepared.

Coming early we are fortunate to get our own table as very soon the restaurant was all packed and people started needing to share tables. First we had the Stir-fried Mutton with Cumin ($74). The mutton was chopped to small pieces and stir-fried with plenty of spring onion, with also the cumin to give the spicy and unique fragrance. Tasty but I think this would be more suitable as fillings for the bun. If serving as a stand-alone dish I would prefer the mutton to be cut in bigger pieces. But maybe this is how the dish is locally prepared?

The second dish we had was Stir-fried Lotus Roots ($50). Served steaming, this certainly has what we would call 'wok-hay', with the lotus roots crunchy but not hard to bite, cut nicely to shreds (I would hope the mutton was cut in such manner) and season well. Looks simple but in fact was very nicely done.

Then we had the Stewed Half Chicken with Sichuan Peppers and a Strip of Biang Noodle ($140). Quite a big portion, the first impression reminded me of the Andong Chicken and I guess that's how the Korean dish was evolved from. The chicken is good in taste and nicely stewed, but with the big pieces of potatoes absorbing the flavors of the sauce, along with the Biang noodle, these are even more tasty than the chicken in my opinion.

Wrapping up we had the Chinese Celery and Pork Dumplings ($37). With six pieces, the dumplings are of good size and burst with fillings. They are juicy and paired well with the vinegar, good in taste too. My only critics is that the Chinese celery was somehow too subdued in aromas and flavors.

The service was decent, but I overheard some other customers not too happy about the table sharing arrangements. I found this excusable and considering that they are charging a very reasonable price ($317 for everything plus two cans of soft drinks) it is a way for them to survive and manage to pay the high rental.