We all get the DGTs - Difficult Guest Tremors - in this town. For instance, one visitor may be too arrogant to like Chinese food on its own terms, but feels it is his 'duty' to sample it. Or a Southeast Asian visitor may find anything outside his cuisine indigestible. If you have two visitors fitting both profiles, entertaining the DGs can be difficult unless you can find 'the right place'. Specifically, it is a restaurant which isn't too posh, too noisy, too quiet, too exotic, too boring, or too tourist-oriented, yet isn't too, well, native, either. Last week, I found a 'right place' in the prosaic-sounding Chau's Restaurant. It seemed custom-built for my two difficult guests. One was a very, very British gentleman who believes food should be simple, boiled and served with hot mustard. The other was a very, very Laotian gentleman from Thailand who believes food should be spicy, fermented and served with hot women. A tall order to meet both their needs, yet Chau's Restaurant did just that. It is a simple place. The 200-odd guests who can dine here are surrounded by light wood walls, the tables are spaced suitably far apart, and the crowd is - to use the archaic word - quite couth. The service is friendly without being patronising. The waiters were very helpful, if their English wasn't perfect. Indeed the manager, Kelvin Chau, spoke almost perfect English and when he heard we wanted Chinese wine, he knew he had guests who could appreciate the best. My Laotian friend and I had the wine, the Brit the beer, and as the platters began piling on to the tables, I found two extremely appreciative diners. Chau's is theoretically a Cantonese restaurant, but they also serve the odd Peking duck, and a number of Hakka dishes, which make it special. Hakka food, made for eating 'on the road', is often covered with salt crystals, thereby preserving the dishes (something like salt cod taken by British seafarers). The food is not to everybody's taste, but those looking for a spotlessly clean Hakka restaurant might enjoy it. They also have Hakka wine, which I had never sampled. At $250 a bottle that was pricey, but after dinner Chau allowed us a glass on the house. It was sweetish, not unpleasant and, my British friend declared, 'would be delightful flambeed or atop Baba au Rhum'. But Hakka dishes being too much for them, we stayed with Cantonese food which both could appreciate. My Laotian friend went for the mixed seafood in a chilli sauce. Although hardly as hot as that of northeast Thailand, this is still a fair melange of scallops, squid, prawns and bamboo shoots - lots and lots of chunky shoots - in a relatively spicy sauce. We also loved their stuffed crab, which, oddly, is not listed on the menu. Each is $50. The crab meat is removed, mashed and mixed with fresh green onions, then stuffed back into the shell and lightly cooked. It was scrumptious. 'Home-made chicken' (the bird is covered with salt and cooked in wine) is supposed to be a specialty here, but we opted for the usual tourist treat of 'boneless chicken with lemon sauce'. Real lemon sauce is rare here; this was chicken with the sauce scooped out of a bottle of lemon curd. It was satisfactory to the Brit, since apparently these people live on lemon curd. The rare dish was fried milk, which was like a fried meringue, with pinenuts sprinkled on top. I love this when it is not sweetened; the Laotian dipped it into a hot sauce and pronounced excellent. For vegetables, we had the broccoli with Chinese mushrooms. Specify that you want a lot of Chinese mushrooms because these are the best. No instructions are needed for the broccoli, which they cook to perfection. Lastly, a platter of honeydew, cantaloupe and oranges. Along with half a bottle of Chinese wine, the bill came to an unlordly $883. 'That,' the Laotian said, 'is almost a Thai price.' Which was quite a compliment. But then Chau's Restaurant is worthy of many a compliment. Tasty, friendly and able to please the most exacting DG. CHAU'S RESTAURANT 3/F, Mass Resources Development Building, 12-16 Humphreys Avenue, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. Hours: 11am-11pm. Tel: 2722-7880.