It used to be called 14 Elgin, a small private club supposed to be a meeting point for the city’s movers and shakers. The problem was that it was so tiny, few could even get in, let alone move and shake. And then when, no one even turned up to do the twist and shout, 14 Elgin closed its doors.
Just a week ago, this location in Lower Elgin Street and opposite popular Indian restaurant Guru and Middle Eastern shisha bar and restaurant Sahara, re-opened as Ding Dim 1968, a very small, cool, relaxed dim sum restaurant with eight tables and an intimate way to dine without screaming over each other to be heard while enduring “the pressures” of ordering as opposed to the pleasures of enjoying a meal with friends.
The service is good, the staff are helpful and the traditional dim sum served is fresh, it’s tasty and with a variety of Cantonese dishes that take one back to a Hong Kong that no longer exists and is the type of restaurant I’d expect Ben and Douglas who started g.o.d. to have opened.
There are also dim sum platters for take-away or to be enjoyed on premise and sample what’s available as part of what I call “communal dining”.
After all the hype and hoopla of fusion and confusion food, Michelin chefs, usual suspects like Harlan Goldstein and the control exercised by the folks with Dining Concepts- unhealthy control- it’s good for Hong Kong to see simple, home-grown entrepreneurism where less is more, small is beautiful and there is not even a whiff of pretentious bullshit and Susan Jungism foodie bollocks.
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