Four Seasons Fun Fong 四季芬芳 (Hong Kong, CHINA) ★★☆☆☆

Another weekend and another hiking trip with little nugget and his beloved friends. This time, we have our destination set in Ma On Shan and since we haven’t been to Shatin for quite some time, I thought we could have an early lunch at New Town Plaza right before our exercise. As usual, I was tasked with finding a place for lunch. After reading all the reviews on Openrice, I decided to bring everyone for a snake feast at Four Seasons Fun Fong (四季芬芳), an offshoot from the famous snake bisque specialist Ser Wong Fun (蛇王芬) who first opened back in 1895 in Guangdong Province and later relocated to Hong Kong in 1940's.

 
We arrived a bit early so the restaurant was still in their preparation mode. There I realized that Four Seasons Fun Fong was actually under the same management as its neighbor, Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice.

 
Double boiled soup with conch, conpoy and winter melon (冬瓜瑤柱燉響螺) – The soul-warming snake dishes would probably get our blood pressure up, which isn’t a very good idea before our hiking trip. So, just some simple dishes for us and I am starting things off with one of their double boiled soup.

 
I picked this one with winter melon and conch which wasn’t bad but honestly, I could hardly taste the flavors from the conch.

Little guy always enjoys his double boiled soup...

 
Spanish Iberico pork rice (西班牙黑豚叉燒飯) – Little nugget had the barbecued pork rice. Like everybody else, they are using Spanish Iberico pork here (sometimes I do rather have some local fatty pork but I guess that’s just me!). Too bad the pork was much less charred than we would all like and a bit too lean for our liking. Sad. Interestingly, the pork and rice were served with the same boiled cucumber from the neighboring Tian Tian, the same ones they serve with their Hainanese chicken.

 
Fried glutinous rice (生炒糯米飯) – I had to wait almost an hour for this. My server kept saying this takes time but come on, an hour…
 
This wasn’t bad though. In my opinion, way better than the BBQ pork rice. Snake restaurants always have a good fried glutinous rice to go with their snake dishes.

 
Stewed oysters with scallion and ginger (薑蔥焗生蠔) – Pretty nice. A little weird to have a heavy dish like this for lunch but everyone loves the fresh, briny flavors from the oysters.

 
Pan-fried egg with minced fish and duck liver sausage (膶腸魚蓉煎蛋角) – A bit of a mixed bag for me. I love duck liver sausages and they worked so well with the egg omelette which was terrific but I am just not sure about the minced fish.

 
We tried to start early so we could get some shopping done before hiking but the fact that they decided to serve us a dish every 10-15 minutes denied us a legitimate chance of doing any shopping (and the restaurant wasn’t even full!). By the time we were almost done, an hour and a half had already passed us by.

While the slow service from the kitchen really annoyed us, what made things even worse was the restaurant's customer service which could only be described as indifferent. In fact, a few of the staff looked as if they didn't want to serve us (one pretended not seeing me wave at him for service). This is most definitely going be the last time I paid for their service around here.  

Food Rating: 4.5/10

Price: $$$

Address: Shop 363A, 3/F, New Town Plaza Phrase 3, 2-8 Shatin Square Road, Sha Tin, NT, Hong Kong

Closest Metro Station: Shatin

Tel: +852 3108-2196

Opening Hours: 11:30am - 3:30pm, 5:30pm - 9:30pm daily