People’s Republic of Tung Chung – 东涌人民共和国

Apart from people seeking commercial sex in Tung Chung (see the FAQ part 1), the other search engine queries that turn up many times a day are from peckish people searching for food delivery services.

Now, eating out in Tung Chung is woeful, for the most part. We have:

• The Aviator: poor food at high prices
• Pizza Hut: poor food at high prices
• Delifrance: Incredibly poor food at high prices
• Starz Bar: Microwaved plastic food at high prices
• Spaghetti House: Bland but inoffensive, although they did once serve a friend of mine with a pizza that included a plastic bag between the base and the topping
• Food Republic: Well, it’s a food court. You wait ages for your food while standing up, and when you have it you won’t be able to find anywhere to sit. Once you have sat, you are haunted by other people hovering nearby holding rapidly cooling meals and waiting for you to leave. Also, Food Republic manages to have a back door but no front door.
• That new restaurant under the cable car, whatever its name is: Can’t even be bothered to go look, because the menu they dropped in my mailbox had “Chinese Western-style Food” scrawled all over it, i.e. bad steak, overcooked and served with fried rice. I’m the last person to lambast Chinese food – I love it in all its forms – but they cannot butcher, so anything involving western cuts of meat is a guaranteed failure. Also, some of my chums have tried this restaurant and say it’s pretty bad.
• KFC: KFC
• McDonalds: Gone, in accordance with CityGate’s policy that an Outlet Mall must contain nothing other than outlets, which is why we don’t have any HSBC ATMs any more either.
• Eastern Gate: Nice dimsums (but a very limited menu; where’s the tripe fried in black pepper? where’s the no mai gai?), long, long queue, and the wait staff get incredibly surly if you overstay while they’re trying to set things up for the Sunday afternoon geriatric mah jong sessions.
• The Thai in the Basement: Some say they like it. I find the food unsubtle and unsophisticated; the sweet-and-sour tastes like ketchup. If you want Thai, go to Melody Thai in Tung Chung Village, where the phanang curry will make you squeak with pleasure, and the full-strength tom yam goong will just make you squeak.

There are other options, but generally I don’t bother eating out in Tung Chung. Kowloon and the Island have a million better alternatives.

You can get food delivered in Tung Chung and it’s not always a bad option. The Handi Tandoori (again, out in Tung Chung Village) does magnificent and authentic Indian food and will bring it right to your door. The aptly named “Pizza and Chicken Experts” will deliver… well, I never used them, but I see their bikes about the place. I assume they’re delivering pizza and chicken.

And now McDonalds claim to deliver as well. I guess they bike it over from Yat Tung, where clothing outlets know their place. In fact I actually tried to order food from MaccyD’s delivery service recently. The nice lady telephonist, whose English was unexpectedly good, told me that “the chef is very busy” and the order would arrive in “one hour and forty minutes”.

Firstly, chef?

Secondly, who waits nearly two hours for a quarter-pounder? McDonalds food is the very last resort for a terminally tired guy who needs a protein-stuffed comfort food fix before lapsing into unconsciousness. It has no features sufficiently redeeming to justify an hour and 40 minutes delay. I cancelled the order and, as a result, added two days to the far end of my lifespan.

And just to annoy all the folks who’ve waded all through this diatribe in the hope of finding phone numbers for Pizza and Chicken Expert, McDonalds, or the Handi Tandoori – yes, I have them all, and no, I’m not publishing them. Not unless they start paying me commission.