Magic Wok

Time Out says

Tue Oct 16 2012

This bustling restaurant has been serving no-nonsense Cantonese food since the late 1980s, and attracts a large, loyal band of regulars (including visitors from overseas). They definitely don’t visit for the basic dining room with its well-worn carpets, scruffy red chairs and plain walls adorned with paintings of bucolic Chinese scenes. The rear ground-floor section is the brighter and quieter part of the restaurant, and preferable to elsewhere. Our waitress seemed to have got out of the wrong side of bed, although Albert Chan, the manager, a veteran of Queensway, always makes us smile.

Many diners order the same dishes every time they visit, and nostalgia can pay dividends. Tasty pork ribs soup with lotus root and groundnut set us up nicely for a homely, satisfying dish of minced pork with salted fish. The kitchen can turn the flavour dial to delicate too; the silky fleshiness of steamed sea bass matched well with ginger and spring onion. A meaty dish of braised duck, locked into a layer of deep-fried yam and vamped up by a sweet and sour sauce, was slightly marred by pieces of dry poultry. Fortune cookies at the end of meal are a nod to a bygone age, and all part of Magic Wok’s enduring appeal.