Lotus Cafe

I like to eat, and I like to eat a lot. I love big, greasy hamburgers and mounds of onion rings. Unfortunately, I can't get that at the Lotus Cafe. However, they do serve a really good Western Fried Rice!

My co-workers and I eat at the Lotus Cafe every day for lunch. The first time I saw this place I was a bit skeptical. First off, from the outside, it looks a little shady. I'd never eat at a place like this in the US.
Second, 90% of the menu is in Chinese. Luckily I always go with someone who can some-what translate for me, but it can be hard to get a good direct translation. The staff at Lotus Cafe has gotten to know me and knows what I will and won't like. They might not be able to tell me exactly what the lunch special is that day, but they will at least tell me that I won't want it.

Every day we eat at the same table, and sit in the same spots. As soon as I walk in the door the staff opens up a bottle of Coke for me and has it sitting on the table. Eventually everybody finally trickles and and we will place our orders.

I find ordering food or getting waited on in Hong Kong is very different than the US. Here, if you want waited on you raise your hand and wave and try to catch the attention of the waiter. If you did that back home, I'm pretty sure a fight would follow as that is normally considered pretty rude. Also, when they bring out your food, not everybody is served at the same time. As soon as the food is cooked it is brought out to you so it is always fresh out of the kitchen. This felt really weird to me at first as I am used to waiting to eat until everybody has food in front of them.

The food here is actually quite good. My favorite is the sliced bar b que beef with egg sauce on rice. I've gotten really good at using chopsticks and a rice shovel to eat almost any dish served. I still have a bit of a hard time eating soup noodles with plastic chopsticks as the dang things are way too slippery! The menu is very diverse at Lotus Cafe and you can get everything from a club sandwich to chickens feet to sweet and sour chicken to lotus root (which I found out isn't that good, kind of tastes like a bad potato.)

I have been told that to find a good restaurant in Hong Kong, don't judge it by how nice it looks, but by how many people are eating there. The local people will always know a good place to eat so it will always be busy. If a really high class looking place has very few people in it, it is either a) bad food or b) very expensive. The food at Lotus Cafe is very reasonably priced and is great quality.