Mak Kee Yummy Food in North Point

A First Visit at Mak Kee Yummy Food

I was looking for simple food in North Point and saw a few favorable online reviews of Mak Kee. The fact that it has earned Michelin recommendation for a consecutive seven years was assuring. I love dumplings, any form of them.

I made my way to Fort Street with Google Map guidance but only found the snack food shop of Mak Kee there. The dine-in restaurant, Mak Kee Yummy Food, is across N View Street on the other side of Fort Street (see directions below).

The Story of Mak Kee Yummy Food

The owner of Mak Kee, Mr. Mak Yong-kwan, had the good repute in the North Point community as the “Fish Ball Pak Pak” (Fish Ball Old Man). During the 1970s in his early years, he learned the craft of making Shanghainese dim sum from famous chefs in Shanghai. Pan-fried pork buns, pot stickers, soup dumplings, xiaolong bao’s—you name it, he has mastered the craft.

Mr. Mak made his way to Hong Kong and he was looking to start his own business. Those were the flourishing times for street food in Hong Kong. Like so many other eager entrepreneurs, Mr. Mak became a hawker and started selling fish balls. For thirty years, he made his name in North Point with his fish balls and mala spicy meat sauce.

Fast forward to the 2000’s, the government was slowly, but surely, phasing out the hawker licenses. Mr. Mak then arranged for a very small shop space to sell takeout cheap eats. He made fish balls, pot stickers and pan-fried pork buns, the items of his forte for decades. His food was well-loved by the residents of North Point. The small neighborhood snack shop would attract long queues.

The restaurant has now opened a proper dining space just down the street from its famous small snack shop. The son of Mr. Mak, Jack, is now running this restaurant as the second-generation owner of this family business.

Mak Kee has been Michelin recommended in the street food category since 2016, and maintained this recognition for seven consecutive years.

The Food of Mak Kee

There are set menus at Mak Kee Yummy Food. These set menus usually come with a main dish (noodles) and a side dish of potstickers. I picked set No. 5 on this day and had a wonderful mala meat sauce noodle with three pot stickers. The milk tea, which also comes with the set, was the perfect conclusion to the meal.

The restaurant offers a long list of Shanghainese dim sums. The pan-fried pork buns are a must-try. The chef makes the skin by a traditional and natural method of old dough fermentation for the skin. When making the buns in this method, the chef has to adjust the water content depending on the humidity and temperature of the day in order to ensure that the flour’s fragrance comes through.

It is cooked also by the traditional way of “raw frying,” meaning that the buns are placed on the grill with raw fillings inside and very slowly-cooked to form a crispy bottom and the meat cooked through. The xiaolongbao comes with chicken soup as its juicy, soup-splashing filling.

There are some new items at the dine-in restaurant, including sweet and sour soup, dumplings in red chilli oil, the dan-dan noodles with a soup base made with ground meat in secret house recipe.

Being known as a cheap eats shop, Mak Kee Yummy Food has maintained its decades-long commitment to good and cheap food. Prices are very reasonable, and with this high quality, it is certainly value for money as well.

How to Get There

On Google Map, Mak Kee shows the location of the small snack shop at No. 21 Fort Street. The original Mak Kee does not have any table seating. The address for the dine-in restaurant is rather No. 19, Fort Street, which is across the N View Street on the other side of Fort Street.

Sources

Descriptions on site at Mak Kee Yummy Food.

Weekendhk.com, Mak Kee Opens New Dine-in Restaurant in North Point.