Lung Wah Hotel

Famous for their squabs/​pigeon. That’s the first thing they ask you as you walk in the door. How many do you want and how do you want it cooked. Roasted/​fried or soy sauce?
I prefer roasted…
So before you can even make this decision, you have to FIND this place. Few options, just keep ask people where this is, take a cab close to the entrance, or try to follow these directions: start at sha tin mtr. Go down the side nearest the Home Center. You will come to a point where in front of you are the buses, to the right are little shops selling things for the monastery. To the left a sidewalk… go to the left. Keep walking through what looks like an alley way. Behind peoples houses… and in a few block you’ll find the entrance…
Anyways… the roasted squab is good. You will need the gloves they give since this is a hands on affair. They also don’t season it when cooking so you will need to condiments they give you. Fun experience… they also have other dishes to compliment your meal…

I’m a huge fan of roasted baby pigeon. There’s just something about the crispy skin and the tender meat that gets to me every time — I don’t think I could ever grow sick of it. My father likes roasted baby pigeon too, and for dinner one night, he suggested going there. When he told me the place was called ‘Lung Wah Hotel’, I was a little confused — roast pigeon doesn’t seem like the kind of food any upscale hotel would specialize in. He quickly told me that this wasn’t a ‘hotel’ hotel, and that it used to be back in the day but is just a restaurant now.
The restaurant is in the middle of nowhere — we took a taxi and had to walk up a bridge that leads us to the hotel. There was a sign that read ‘Lung Wah Hotel’, and the sign looked like it had come straight out of the 70s. Since it was dark, it was actually quite a sight to walk through the pathway after the bridge. The pathway is lit up with red glowing lanterns on both sides and is really quite pretty! I’m not normally one to take many photos, but this instantly made me turn on my little-​seen full on photography mode.
We had to wait about twenty minutes for a table. The restaurant was full, and there were large groups of people waiting outside too. I took this opportunity to take a ton of photos of the lanterns outside and playing around with the filters on my phone. Finally, we were called in. The restaurant is basically a huge hall with minimal décor. It looked like a typical old-​fashioned Chinese restaurant with lots of round tables and a solid color table cloth over them, with many large tables to accommodate big groups.
We ordered two roasted pigeons, the fried salt and pepper tofu and the stir-​fried flat noodles. The pigeon came pretty quick, understandable because that’s what everyone orders here so they are probably preparing it by the dozens. And the pigeon was good — the skin was nice and crispy and the meat was very soft. I normally don’t like getting down and dirty when eating, but with roast pigeons it’s a different story! They provide you plastic gloves to wear when eating, which I thought was really helpful.
After devouring the pigeons, we waited at least half an hour before our other two dishes came! The restaurant was clearly very busy and we were alright with taking a breather, so we waited patiently. Both the fried tofu and the noodles were not bad, but nothing to write home about. The noodles were quite oily and by then I was getting full, so I didn’t have much of it.
Overall, if you like roasted baby pigeon, you have to come here! This is probably one of the most authentic places for it and being here makes you feel like you’ve travelled forward a couple of decades in time. That aside, the restaurant is quite noisy and the staff aren’t the most efficient people, so it wouldn’t be the best place to have a quick and relaxed meal.