Dining
Bouillon: A Parisian Bistro up Pound Lane
A small, cosy room up a Sheung Wan side street, a wine list running past 160 bottles, and a steak tartare worth crossing the harbour for.
Hong Kong has no shortage of French restaurants. It has rather fewer proper bistros — the kind where the room is warm, the wine is personal, and nobody has been asked to reinvent the beef bourguignon. Bouillon is one, tucked up Pound Lane where you would never think to look.
6 Pound Lane, Sheung Wan
Up Pound Lane
You come up the hill and there it is: a teal shopfront, the name in white, chalkboard menus by the door. Inside is smaller than you expect — cosy, and very cute, in the way the good ones always are.
They open at ten and close at eleven, every day of the week. I had a two o'clock reservation and still walked into a packed room — it seems to be a favourite for birthdays.
Book. A two o'clock table is not a formality here — the room fills, and it is not a big one.
Chef Johan Ducroquet
The Classics, Unapologised For
Chef Johan Ducroquet cooks the canon and cooks it generously: duck leg confit, lobster ravioli, grilled bone marrow, a Rossini de Boeuf — tenderloin under foie gras and truffle sauce — that is exactly as rich as it sounds.
But the one to order is the steak tartare, which comes with french fries and is, quite simply, amazing. It is food with no interest in being clever — increasingly, the rarer thing.
The steak tartare with french fries. Order it before you look at anything else.
160+ References
A Wine List with a Point of View
Past 160 references, drawn largely from family-owned and eco-conscious vineyards rather than the usual roll-call of big houses. It is a list assembled by someone with opinions, which is the only kind worth reading.
Ask them to choose. They will, and they will be right — and stay for the tarte tatin, which arrives under a slow collapse of ice cream and caramel.
“Food with no interest in being clever. That, increasingly, is the rarer thing.
Bouillon is the sort of address you keep for a slow Saturday, when lunch is allowed to become the afternoon.
Book ahead — the room is small, and word has travelled.
Bouillon Bistro Parisien · 6 Pound Lane, Sheung Wan · Open daily, 10am–11pm · +852 2886 0056
— Reyna Harilela
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