hui lau shan (causeway bay)

For all intents and purposes this is a mango shop. Although their English subtitle is "Healthy Desserts," they don't specialize in anything other than the beautiful yellow fruit (and yes, I know mangoes can be quite healthy). For 30HKD you can get mango served in pretty much any appealing way imaginable. Countless kinds of drinks and bowls with red bean, sago pearls, ice cream and pudding. The drinks always feel cheap to me so I recommend one of the mango bowls. My favorite is the dish with glutinous rice balls, ice cream and extra mangoes. They all taste pretty much the same though.

I've also been satisfied with my limited exposure to the snacks here. They serve rice balls with mango inside, like the kind that you can buy at a bakery and they're covered in coconut and have fresh mango inside. It's a strange combination at first, but it's also not shabby. Everything is very decent here--there's little variation in the dessert quality.

One of the things that I didn't really like about Hui Lan Shan was that it doesn't have a wall facing the street. So when it's cold, like it is now, and you're sitting inside, you feel like you're sitting on the street. It's also typically overcrowded and the stools feel like they were stolen from a pre-school. This is HK for you though I guess. They've also got takeaway, in the case you'd rather eat in an alley or somewhere warmer.

3 out of 5, food is better, but environment is sometimes annoying

hui lau shan desserts

24 percival street

po han bldg

causeway bay