Howard's Gourmet

The Restaurant

Howard's Gourmet sits on the first floor of Sino Plaza off Gloucester Road in Causeway Bay — a deliberately unmarked address that filters its clientele to the in-the-know Hong Kong dining set. Chef-owner Howard Cai trained across Chiu Chow (Teochew) heritage kitchens in Guangdong before opening his own intimate tasting-menu room more than a decade ago, and the restaurant has held a Michelin star continuously for several years. The dining space is small — fewer than thirty-five covers across a main room and a single private dining alcove — appointed in warm cream, dark hardwood and brushed-brass accents, with a glass-front kitchen pass at the back of the room that puts Cai and his line in clear view of every table.

The cooking is contemporary Chiu Chow built on the deepest classical foundation. The signature cold marinated crab — sweet, briny, served with the chef's house Chiu Chow vinegar reduction — is the room's first calling card, followed across the tasting menu by a goose-liver-and-pomelo terrine that has become a much-copied Hong Kong dish, a slow-braised abalone in oyster sauce that runs as a six-hour preparation, the famous Chiu Chow lor mei platter with three-day-marinated goose, and a finishing course of the chef's Chiu Chow-style fish congee with hand-cut conpoy and fresh garoupa. Each course arrives with a brief written note from Cai explaining the regional provenance and the technique — a detail that has earned Howard's Gourmet a reputation as the most pedagogical Chiu Chow tasting room in the city.

The wine and tea program runs in parallel. The wine list, while shorter than Man Wah's or Caprice's, is fanatically chosen — about two hundred and fifty references with a clear bias toward white Burgundy, vintage Champagne, and the German and Alsatian whites that the kitchen's marinated and braised preparations rewardingly demand. The Chinese tea pairing is the more distinctive option: a flight of five rare aged teas (vintage Pu-erh from the 1980s, single-bush dancong oolong from Phoenix Mountain, an aged white tea from Fujian) selected by the chef and served in matching gaiwan ware. For a Hong Kong dinner that reads as both deeply Chinese and quietly sophisticated, Howard's Gourmet remains the in-crowd answer.