Foraging for food in Causeway Bay often starts not with pushing open a door, but with pressing an elevator button or heading down a staircase. Kozy Okonomi-yaki Teppan-yaki is tucked inside an office building on the 9th floor of Circle Plaza at 499 Hennessy Road, specializing in teppanyaki and okonomiyaki, with mixed vegetable okonomiyaki (HKD58), scallion okonomiyaki (HKD78), and A4 wagyu striploin (HKD290) as signature combos. Dilliwale likewise requires a climb to the 9th floor of Kyoto Plaza on Lockhart Road, where this North and South Indian specialist awaits; Kampoeng Chandra takes the opposite route, sitting in the basement along Sugar Street as the largest of Causeway Bay's "Little Indonesia" spots, serving up authentic rendang and gado-gado (HKD68). This "hidden in plain sight" spatial logic is, in many ways, the true face of Causeway Bay's food scene—ground-floor storefronts ran out of room long ago, so good food had no choice but to burrow up and down.
A Dialogue Between Old Names and New Faces
Sunning Restaurant has been open since 1948, making it one of Hong Kong's oldest surviving restaurants, serving what's known as "soy-sauce Western cuisine"—Chinese ingredients prepared French, American, or English style. The French escargot set (HKD270) comes with borscht or cream soup, followed by a choice of beef tenderloin, turbot fillet, pork chop, or chicken Manila, and finished off with coffee or tea. Ho Hung Kee Congee & Noodle Wantun Shop earned its Michelin star with springy noodles and silky-smooth congee, its signature spicy sauce noodles (HKD78) and fish fillet congee (HKD68) being familiar flavors to longtime regulars. By contrast, chef Simon Rogan's Roganic has run in Causeway Bay for five years, built around organic vegetable-forward cooking, earning both a Michelin star and a Green Star in the 2024 guide. After relocating to the new Lee Gardens One site, its dinner set menu (HKD1,280 per person) presents shared-style dishes like maitake mushroom, Cantonese duck, and bluefin tuna sashimi. In the same mall complex downstairs sits Aire, where the chef uses charcoal and open flame to prepare Spanish-style smoked eggplant (HKD67) and whole Spanish sea bass (HKD560). Chef Roland Schuller, who has held multiple Michelin stars in Hong Kong, now runs the handmade pasta bar La Volta on Nam Fung Road, where among 40 freshly made pasta options, baked macaroni (HKD168) and pesto fusilli (HKD148) are the most popular. Leela, named Best Indian Restaurant by Foodie Forks in 2024, carries on generations-old Indian cooking traditions with its Lucknowi tikka salad (HKD138) and smoked butter chicken (HKD258).
