Love birds

Golden garlic pigeon eggs. Photos by Pauline D. Loh / China Daily

Crisp roasted pigeon. Photos by Pauline D. Loh / China Daily

The Lung Wah Restaurant nestles at the foot of a hill.

Hong Kong

It's an affair that started many years ago with romantic images of screen idols courting against the background of an al fresco courtyard. The romance of Shatin's Lung Wah restaurant continues as Pauline D. Loh savors nostalgia in Hong Kong.

They would be cruising in a red sports convertible along country roads, and the heroine's hair would be neatly tucked underneath a flowing silk scarf. The hero, or villain as the plot dictates, would be dressed in sporty whites with a dark cravat niftily tied at the collar. More often than not, their final destination would be afternoon tea at this restaurant.

Here, under the huge umbrellas in the hillside courtyard, they would sip exotic cocktails with matching tiny umbrellas perched on the rims and enjoy the scenic view of the New Territories, and they would flirt.

Those were the time-tested plots of the movies of my early childhood.

Sometimes, they had a happy ending. Sometimes, the girl gets drunk, is carted inside to the hotel and she would lose her virtue amid thunder and lightning and sit sobbing on the bed while said villain re-arranges his cravat, satisfied leer on his face.

Lung Wah shed the hotel part of their business years ago, and the courtyard al fresco dining area is now blocked by neighboring commercial towers. The country roads are gone too, having given way to busy thoroughfares servicing the New Territories' oldest suburb.

But if the human lovebirds have flown the nest, there is one thing Lung Wah still does very well.

Pigeons. They serve the tastiest here, and in a city where every corner roast-meat stall sells a pigeon or two or three, that's saying a lot.

There used to be pigeon cots lining the steep path leading up to the restaurant, but since the first bird flu epidemic all those years ago, the birds have been shifted to farms deeper inside the New Territories, and to Shenzhen.

On a recent visit during the Spring Festival holidays, I brought my husband there for some pigeon. He had already been introduced to snake soup and was game for anything, even an attempt at romance.

Despite having been around for more than 60 years, the restaurant has lost none of its popularity. It was packed at 6 pm and we were politely told we would have only two hours to eat before the next round of diners came. So much for romance.

The menu is in Chinese, some passable English and Japanese. The last would have rung alarm bells 10 years ago, but the Japanese big spenders are now creatures of the past and the menu prices seemed reasonable enough. The signature pigeons are all HK$78 ($10) each and you can choose from the crispy roasted bird, the soy-sauce braised pigeon, the bird baked in rock salt and the enigmatic "Fuadiao Baptist pigeon milk".

We grabbed a passing waitress and she explained. It's pigeon marinated in Chinese yellow wine or huadiao, and the bird is completely dunked like a Baptist. We decided to order the crisp roasted pigeon.

This came with a pair of plastic gloves that signaled the fact that you can toss the chopsticks and use your hands. You can have the bird served whole to satisfy the inner carnivore or halved to suit the more genteel side of your appetite. We decided to have our bird quartered simply because my husband would eat most of our pigeon.

At $78 a platter, the Lung Wah pigeon costs $30 more than your average street bird, but I think it's worth the money when you add the roasting skill, the ambience, the service - and the plastic gloves.

We also ordered golden pigeon eggs served in a potato nest. The egg whites were surprisingly tender, despite having been hard-boiled and then deep-fried.

It was a very interesting texture contrast, with the crisp golden garlic bits and the crunchy "nest" of potato.

This is probably something you order to charm the children if you are eating out as a family.

There is a vast variety of soups and specials, including the ubiquitous shark-fin, but we chose to have a lobster gratin on a bed of fried noodles, and a final dish of fried mustard greens.

It was just the two of us, and memories of my mother's decadent reunion meal the night before was still very much with us. If you go, be brave and explore more of the menu.

Our bill came up to about HK$700, but that's because we ordered two birds to go for our hosts in Hong Kong. Otherwise, you can expect to spend about HK$200 a person on average.

Lung Wah is not one of those bright, modern restaurants with high-tech decor and an elegant staff, but it serves up honest good food that is slightly old-fashioned, but satisfying. I really don't know how long it's going to hold its own against the swarm of competitors, so go while you can and savor a little of the glamour from Hong Kong's silver-screen glory days.

You may contact the writer at paulined@chinadaily.com.cn.