25+ restaurants: Sang Kee Restaurant in Wan Chai plates the classics

In 1983, Dicken Wong Lap-yan's parents opened a Cantonese restaurant on Wan Chai Road, serving home-style classics such as salt-baked chicken, preserved vegetables on gai laan, and sweet and sour pork, as well as the freshest seafood they could get their hands on. Wong says, "My mother is a good cook, and my parents love to eat. They wanted to open a restaurant where their friends could meet and enjoy good, traditional food and a few drinks."

From this goal spawned a minor revolution. Sang Kee's popularity soared, and two decades later, moved to a larger, two-storey place on Hennessy Road.

Wong says it's getting harder to do the dishes they specialise in. "It's very difficult to hire cooks who are willing to put in the work required to make these dishes. Some don't last for more than a few weeks. The work is less tedious elsewhere." He says Chinese restaurants are more commercialised, with a lot of the food pre-made in factories and covered in heavy sauce. "Traditional [Cantonese] cuisine celebrates the innate flavours of fresh food. We don't want sauces to overpower them."

Not all his customers understand - "Sometimes people ask why we don't give them sauces on the side, so we try to explain it to them," he says - although there are clearly plenty who do. "We have customers who have been coming for years. They may have emigrated, but they still come back. Some come with their children and grandchildren."

They continue to source and cook in much the same way as when they started. They buy seafood directly from a fisherman whom they've known for decades, the team also makes daily visits to the wet markets in Wan Chai and Bowrington Street, which ensures freshness, but also means they often run out of popular dishes.

"We have a basic menu for all seasons, but we also have specials that we write down on these messy pieces of paper," he says with a laugh, pointing to the notes plastered on pillars and walls all over the restaurant.