S Wan Cafe

It’s super easy to miss this subterranean hole in the wall but if you’re in the hood and in the mood for some real deal HK style eats, don’t pass this place by. You can tell there’s tons of regulars who chat it up with the owners.
Great ‘yin-​yangs” and milk teas, perfectly runny eggs in their breakfast combos, and noodles perfectly stir-​fried with ‘wok hei’. I don’t do the wonderbread type sammies often but there’s just something super comforting about the squishy white bread Canto sandwiches with egg.
A bit skimpy on the veg/​ingredients (read: starch city) but I guess that’s to be expected for the price. Gets a bit crowded with the after school crowd.

Hmmm, after reading the Unilocal reviews I was prepared to be impressed. Unfortunately, this place was a bit of a letdown. The people were nice so I would go back and try another dish, but the chicken chop over spaghetti was not so good.

This freaking place. I just can’t. The greatest hidden gem in all of Chinatown.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before but you need to head down the street from Vanessa’s (nothing against them, they’re great!) and come here for that OG Canton experience. Shockingly good food for shockingly cheap. Breakfast, lunch, dinner.
You want the best, juiciest, most tender chicken steak you’ve ever eaten in your life? How about for 5 bucks? Or some eggs gloriously drizzled with Cantonese soy sauce? Or a quick spam n egg sandwich for breakfast?
Yeah. This place has those things, and then some. Come and get it.

I ordered Breakfast Combo D to go, which includes one small piece of pork chop (when I say small, it means really small), 2 fried eggs, butter toast and iced milk tea. And it was one of the saddest breakfasts I’ve ever had. The pork was bland and not fresh; the toasts were soggy in the middle; eggs were runny and the milk tea didn’t taste any better than the one-​dollar milk tea from bakeries around Chinatown.
The combo itself is $ 4.75 and they charged me $ 1 because I replaced the hot milk tea with iced drink. It’s okay as I was completely aware of that when reading the menu. However, with such a mediocre quality, I believe it’s not worth my $ 6 because there are other places offering better foods at cheaper price in Chinatown.

My company order lunch all the time from them. The price is very responsible while the food is very delicious. Beef stew rice noodle soup is one of my favorite. Taste so good. And I also love their free desert that comes with lunch. This café food is comparatively better than a lot of restaurants. I’m so glad we found them.

A small little café offering pretty authentic food. What makes it so amazing? It’s all affordable! I was introduced to this place by my boyfriend who used to come here almost everyday for breakfast (and lunch). If you haven’t noticed, it may be his favorite place.
Now I get lunch here every now and then.
The interior of the place and the attitude of people working here isn’t exactly the best. Well, that’s expected. Why else would it be placed in Chinatown as a small hole in the wall instead of a 5 star hotel?
You get what you pay for and the food is good enough.
If I were you, I’d give this place a try.

Authentic Hong Kong tea café style food — satay beef noodle soup, curry fish balls, grilled pork cutlet/​chicken cutlet over spaghetti, spam and egg sandwich, congee, rice noodle roll with mixed sauce, stir fried noodles with soy sauce etc. If you’re familiar with Hong Kong you know what I’m talking about. Go there!

Great place for Hong Kong style café. It has great food and normally my go to place for a quick meal. Price is good for the food you get and I normally add an egg for $ 0.50.
Pros: Great food for a good price
Cons: not a lot of seating if you plan on bringing a huge group
The bathroom is in the back so you will have to ask to get there, it might be a bit slippery some times, but if you need to go you need to go.

This is literally a hole in the wall venue that serves up traditional Hong Kong styled breakfast and rice dishes. It’s located underground with a couple of tables spread out throughout the place. It can get crowded often as it is a popular hangout spot for locals to grab breakfast or lunch.
I’ve been here several times for rice dishes and in my opinion, they were mediocre tasting, but filling. My personal favorite would be the fried rice with taro. I tried the chicken curry over rice but I found the curry to be weak and watered down, so ehh. On the sandwich menu, I found the chicken chop sandwich to be a bit tasteless. They could’ve at least seasoned the chicken with a little salt and pepper.
Would I come back? Maybe.

Get the HK style tea, they will only use the Hong Kong tea unless you want the tea bag (which is stupid).
Breakfast is awesome, ABCD menu with 4 variation for each letter.
Remember to you can add a pan fried egg on any meal, I think they charge $.50-​$ 1.
The close early around 6, so get there before that. And call ahead will save you the waiting time. Call before heading to the train at 34^th St, food was ready by the time I got there, and got back to the office within 1 hour.

This place is the best place to get some of the most cheapest quality meals in Chinatown. Their menu is huge and cooked extremely well. I got the beef chow fun here and it was delicious!
The place has plenty of seats but it is always packed by locals drinking tea and eating food. It’s quite hidden from the rest of chinatown but its very worth the discovery!

Was recommended this hole-​in-​the-​wall type of place by a friend after I mentioned I wanted to try authentic hong kong breakfast. I ordered spam with macaroni for only $ 3.75 which, by itself, was very filling! Their soy sauced noodles tasted good and next time Id like to get fish balls with noodles, which everyone seemed to order. I also appreciated the attention they gave me when I stood awkwardly around, too shy to join a table (seating is not assigned and limited) and went out of their way to get a seat for me. Cleaner than I expected, and carries the charm of a simple, no frills kind of place focused on feeding the people.

This hole in the wall (or floor) is always busy but not quite the tourist trap busy like other food joints. You get a Hong Kong café vibe when you’re in here. Very fast service for dine-​in and take-​out. Their Pork Chops with Onions over Rice & Iced Milk Tea are on point. Good prices, nothing over $ 7.

This place is always packed to the max! So you know what that means! They offer a pretty extensive menu along with very reasonable prices. I usually opt for the breakfast specials (Ham macaroni to be exact) because it’s inexpensive and comes with a drink and an egg sandwich for $ 4! Don’t ever walk in to place your order or else be prepared to wait (quite a long time that is). Your best bet is to call & do so beforehand so you don’t have to end up being sandwiched by 10 people while waiting.

Is it really worth 4 stars?
Taste wise. Everything here is acceptable, nothing that wows you to keep coming back. The noodles are precooked already and when you order they just put it together (if you ordered a spam and macaroni they just add soup and spam on top and that’s it).
The price is reasonable for what you order, but honestly you can’t find prices this cheap anymore anywhere. They have breakfast specials for only around $ 4. The service here is fast based on the fact the food is simple and mostly premade.
Don’t expect too much because you get what you pay for. But for some reason I really like this place, it brings back memories (as for a lot of people who grew up in Chinatown).
For the last note, this place isn’t exactly the most sanitary. I’ve found a hair in my breakfast before but to tell the truth it didn’t bother me as much as it should. I’m used to the lack of hygiene in chinese restaurants so I guess for me it’s not a big deal. Of course I stopped eating it but I still keep coming back anyway. It’s a decent place for fast Hong Kong style food.

I have to start off saying that I’m a little biased towards this café. When I was a broke high school (and college) student, this was my go-​to place for breakfast and lunch. This is definitely a hole in a wall, no-​frills kind of place. Everything is served on disposable plates and foam cups and they call out your order when it is ready for pickup. There are no servers here and you will need to ask for everything, but I don’t mind. I find it to be charming and different. Plus, I enjoyed not having to pay tips (and this is a huge deal when you’re poor.)
The portion here is ridiculous for the price. One of my all time favorites is the curry chicken over spaghetti. I’m actually not even sure if this was ever on the menu or if I made it up and they just cooked it anyway. Another good dish is the pork chop over rice. As for the drinks, definitely give the HK style milk tea and the honey lemon tea a try. The milk tea is just the perfect combination of sweet, bitter, and creamy.
Really, just don’t come here with high expectations. If you’re looking for the «cha chan tang» type of cheap eats, I’d highly recommend this café.

TL;DR Get on the cofftea ($ 2 for large) train. Live like a real Hong Kong person.
what you know about that yin yang drink? NOTHING cause you still on that flat white when I’m on that coffee tea hybrid. This is the only place that serves cofftea well. It’s name in cantonese is literally Yin Yang (yes that symbol with white and black) I think the name is fitting since when the cofftea is in perfect harmony it’s like reaching enlightenment with the first sip. It’s like knowing all 24 steps of tai chi to the point it’s just muscle memory. It’s like poppa wheeling your bike and riding it down a block with a straight face. It’s like working on your excel spreadsheet without using your mouse. Others begrudgingly and silently respect your aptitude. That’s what cofftea is.
In a world where they tell you to specialize in one area, in a society where they label you, cofftea tells them all I can be more than one thing and still be better than others. YinYang isn’t just a drink or a symbol, it’s a place to reach.
Oh right. They also serve really cheap food that the Hong Kong masses eat on the daily. They make it just like the places in HK would. It’s pretty authentic, but this type of food isn’t actually that hard to make. I’m not sure the market for this everyday food of Hong Kong is big since, most people will just call it a simple thing that they can make at home. But know this… when you eat here in the sea of chinese people (because it always has customers), you are taking a bite out of everyday HK.

The Hong Kong milk tea is definitely like CRACK. Strong and addictive. MM. There’s not that many places that make tea like this. The food is extraordinary cheap and I’ve been here multiple times. Staff are nice and quick, so there’s not much of a wait. There’s no table service — you have to order at the register and clean up after yourself.
There’s not much of a seating area, super informal… hole in the wall ftw!

I’ve been to Chinatown since I was a little kid, but I have never been to this place.
This is one of the hole in the wall places. Nothing fancy, it resembles a typical café in Hong Kong.
They have breakfast, lunch and dinner.
It is pescatarian friendly. There is the shrimp stir fried with egg, with spaghetti, it tasted really good, the best one in chinatown so far, at $ 6, pretty cheap and the portions were good. I also tried the eel over rice on a different day, this was about $ 6 too while it cost well over $ 10 at a Japanese place for the same thing.
Good affordable food, come here.
They are crazy busy at lunch and even if they don’t have it on the menu, they will make it as long as they have the ingredients.
This place is closed on Sundays, very rare for an Asian place, they must be raking in the dough.

Overall pretty good, but it just takes a while to get your food. Unfortunately, my spaghetti with fried pork Patty wasn’t what I expected. The spaghetti and sauce was a little watery. The pork patty tasted a little bit like the pork equivalent of Fishcake. There wasn’t much flavor to it. On the other hand, they gave me an extra egg on top my egg. I’m a big fan of big food, so I was pleasantly surprised.
My friends beef over rice was pretty good. The beef and the peppers were very fresh. The sauce smelled really nice too. Unfortunately, he did happen to find a piece of wood about an inch long. We think it might’ve came from the chopping board. Accidents happen, so we were not too upset.
My other friends curry and chicken looked pretty good. He liked it for the most part, but it was a little dry and grainy. The chicken, however, was very tender and the flavor was very savory. Finally, my friend ordered a grass jelly drink. He really liked it, and it was freshly made. Prices are reasonable, the staff is very nice, and the atmosphere is pretty good if you just want to hang out. Often filled with many locals who like to enjoy a nice meal with some friends.
Would probably come back.