My Kitchen

Tibetan food is not something most people in Hong Kong encounter often, which makes this small Jordan restaurant an outlier on a street otherwise filled with the city's usual mix of noodle shops and cha chaan tengs. My Kitchen sits at ground level on Saigon Street, a short residential road tucked between the busier arteries of Jordan, and its menu draws entirely from the food of the Tibetan plateau rather than adapting it to more familiar Cantonese or Southeast Asian reference points.

Momos are the clearest signature here, made by hand and available steamed or fried, with fillings that run from chicken and beef to water buffalo and a vegetable version for those avoiding meat. Thukpa, a noodle soup built on a long simmered broth, appears in a beef version thick enough to serve as a full meal on its own. Shabhalep, a fried pastry stuffed with seasoned meat, offers a different texture entirely, closer to a savory hand pie than anything noodle based. Balep, a simple flatbread, and the more festive khabse, a fried pastry usually associated with Tibetan celebrations, sit alongside tingmo, a soft steamed bread meant to be torn apart and used to mop up whatever sauce or curry is on the table. Dum aloo, a slow cooked potato curry, brings in an Indian influenced side of the menu, alongside samosa chaat and aloo tikki, both pointing to the overlap between Tibetan and northern Indian cooking that shows up in exile communities in particular. To drink, there is masala tea, a salted butter tea specific to Tibetan tradition, and lassi.

Seating is limited, which fits the restaurant's scale as a specialist kitchen rather than a large dining hall, and reflects how narrow much of the surrounding Jordan streetscape is. The restaurant has been featured in at least one piece covering harder to find cuisines in the city, a reflection of how few Tibetan kitchens operate in Hong Kong at all.