New restaurants in Hong Kong: Yardbird, Sheung Wan - nose-to-tail yakitori is worth the wait
On a menu where most of the chicken is used apart from the head and feet, the ventricle with tare and Kyoto shichimi and the deeply flavoured heart with spring onion and ginger were the night’s favourites
Bad timing led to me and my guest standing during much of our meal at Yardbird. From past experiences at the restaurant – at the old location, not their new premises – we knew that it was best to arrive just when they open at 6pm. We thought we had a bit of leeway at the new place because in addition to the front room (which seems to be much larger than the entire old premises) there’s also a spacious and much quieter back room.
Because of this, I thought it safe to arrange to arrive at 6.30pm. My guest was there on time, but I was five minutes late – and they don’t seat parties until the whole group has arrived (which is fair enough). And then we found the back room had been booked out for a private party so sitting there wasn’t an option.
Fortunately, we had a proactive and friendly waiter who came to us as we were standing around and waiting with our drinks, who asked us if we wanted to reserve any dishes before they sold out. He also offered to start serving some of the food while we waited for seats.
It was just over an hour of standing before two seats at the bar were available, and ironically, it was there that we had to wait for our food. Until then, the dishes had been coming slowly (at our request) and steadily, but when we sat down, we had to wait for 40 minutes before any food was served.
