Please note, Mr Kong is now closed. Time Out Food & Drink Editors.
Infuriatingly inconsistent where it used to be dependable, Mr Kong continues to attract full houses, but few Chinese. The menu is gargantuan and that’s part of the problem: it’s not always easy to separate Cantonese wheat from Anglo-Chinese chaff. A ‘chef’s special’ of baby squid with chilli arrived lukewarm and gaudily clad in lurid-orange, chewy batter – dreadful. It was in stark contrast to a plate of crunchy-fresh gai lan (chinese broccoli) in ginger; and an equally excellent soup of tender sliced pork, salted eggs and gai choi (mustard cabbage) in hearting-warming pork stock. Somewhere in between was a hotpot of belly pork with preserved vegetables, and a brace of razor clams with vermicelli and soy-chilli dipping sauce – both dishes a mite too dry, as was the steamed rice. Vegetarians have their own sizeable list of specials, including mock abalone, pork, shark’s fin and crispy duck. The restaurant’s layout has been frequently changed over its quarter-century history. There are now three small dining rooms (ground, lower-ground and first floor) where anodyne surroundings of white walls and dark-green carpets are jazzed up with yellow tablecloths and framed artefacts on the walls.