The last few blocks of Rowe Street’s restaurant strip buzz. Expect Chinese grocers, baked goods and dumplings, plus everything from stonepot fish to crisp-bottomed sheng jian bao, pork soup dumplings, (here’s looking at you, 257 Home Kitchen). Zheng’s Skewer BBQ – from the team behind Jin’s Grilled Meat Pies – is worth a stop, but if sweets are the order, there’s no going past Hon Kee Hong Kong Dessert.
Come nightfall, tables heave with bowls of milk pudding or glutinous rice with coconut. Both are good picks, but the mango pomelo sago is the fan favourite: cool, refreshing, with bursts of citrus, there’s no better dish to close out an evening.
The menu features more than 50 desserts, many of them “sweet soups” – known as tong su (or “sugar water”) in Hong Kong – a syrupy, pudding-like sweet flavoured with ingredients like almonds, walnut, red bean and black sesame.
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
David Matthews is a food writer and editor, and co-editor of The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2025.
