Noodles With My Fahza: YKY Home Noodles in Sai Kung

Friday beers noodles. It has a ring to it. This is something that has become somewhat of a regular staple (and the highlight of my week) for my father and me over the last year in Hong Kong.  However, it doesn’t always have to be noodles but most of the time it is. ‘Friday noodles’ is more of a mindset than anything. It’s a call to spend quality time with loved ones. 

On the docket for one of the most recent ‘Noodle Fridays’ was YKY Home Noodles (自家麵) out in Sai Kung, a popular no-nonsense chain, with locations scattered across Hong Kong, serving up highly customizable bowls of homemade Chinese noodles, steamed dumplings, and beef pies (xian bing).

Here’s what I love about YKY and what you can expect when you go.  

Pale Ale Travel Note: If you didn’t get the reference, the term ‘Fahza’ is from one of my all-time favorite movie trilogies, Austin Powers in Goldmember, when the heavily accented Dutch ‘Goldmember’ has captured Austin’s womanizing father (played by Michael Caine) and is explaining this to Dr. Evil (who has zero idea what Goldmember is talking about – “His Farger? What’s a Farger?”). 

Build Your Own Home Noodles (B.Y.O.H.N.) at YKY

Working up a little appetite walking around Sai Kung.

Website, Address, & Details:

• Website: N/A
• Location: Sai Kung, King Man St, 9號Shop 1, G/F Ko Shing House
• Price: $

As I don’t typically eat during the day due to my intermittent fasting (only so I don’t end up on that television show ‘The Biggest Loser’ or ‘My 600 lb Life’), I mentally prepared myself the night before meeting my old man and stuck to a light all-vegetarian dinner (highly recommend ‘Treehouse’ in Central). 

After a liter of potent double espressos from Little Cove Espresso (just around the corner), and several laps around Sai Kung’s Old Town (pictured below), I was violently dragged into the restaurant belly first – as if my stomach was tied to a runaway horse that saw its opportunity to flee.  

My father told me that the location in Sai Kung was/is the original, where million-dollar noodle dreams and federal nightmares first began. I’ve been unable to verify this online but he has been out in Sai Kung for quite some time so I will give him some credit. No matter the origin story, you can now find YKY, also known as ‘Home Noodles’ and 自家麵 (literally ‘homemade noodles’), in various pockets and corners of the city: primarily on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. 

Note: The location on Wellington Street in Central appears on Google Maps as both 自家麵 and King Noodle. I walk by this every day on my way to work and usually press two fingers to my lips and then tap the window out of admiration and reverence. 

YKY’s Sai Kung branch actually has two storefronts, and staff will direct you to the one with available seats upon arrival. Both really don’t strike me as places capable of seating more than 2.5 people due to the awkward layout of tables and counter seating. However, I wasn’t there to start any beef (noodles – boom, still got it) with the shop proprietor over the interior design. I was strictly there for the noodles and father-son bonding. 

My farger and I settled in at one of two (or three) tables and ordered a few beverages: me a Coke Zero, him an iced lemon tea. He walked me through his go-to orders on the menu, which were mainly of the noodle variety (of course) and I sat in deep reflection over what type of noodle day it was going to be for this Big Body. The Sai Kung spaghetti saga continues below. 

More Noodle Types Than You Can Shake a Noodle At

I was almost this close to making a cliche, played-out joke about noodles being called ‘noodz’ but tried to spare everyone reading that unoriginal sexualized trope. Also, I wasn’t going to be talking about noodz and my father in the same article.

YKY Home Noodles definitely had to have been created out of a family argument where after the hundredth argument over what style of noodles should be made for dinner, the matriarch and/or patriarch snapped and just decided to make every style imaginable. Then, after their first peaceful night’s sleep in roughly 15 years, he or she decided it was just better to go that extra step and cover all of their metaphorical noodle bases every time they made dinner thereafter. Or, this is what I tell myself. 

At YKY, you’re able to customize your noodles almost as much as a FIFA character, with noodle texture and thickness selections of wide, rough, medium, and thin, along with the broth base selections range of original, pepper, and various spicy (and sour) numbing options. The only difference with FIFA forward customization is that you aren’t now a suave, handsome Brazilian man with six-pack abs and a neck tattoo – I already asked the waitress if this was doable and she told me to leave immediately. 

Having been on a massive ramen tear for oh, I don’t know, the last several years of my life, I was in the mood for a colder noodle and opted for the cold sesame noodles with shredded cucumber and beef shank. I generally prefer my noodles cooked more ‘al dente’ and with a nice little snap to them so I opted (generally opt) for the ‘rough’ noodles. 

The cold sesame noodles brought me back to my first days living in Beijing when I’d frequent a local noodle vendor every day for a refreshing afternoon noodle pick-me-up. I went not only because of the sesame sauce’s familiarity with unsalted peanut butter (which after living in Beijing for a bit became a food that I missed dearly) and its quality, affordable lunch fare but also because I was working up the courage to ask out the vendor in my then broken Chinese. 

At YKY, I can’t say that the beef shank on top was of the highest quality or cooked well as they were thin, cold slices that like me in today’s digitized dating world, were well past their prime. But that’s not why I ordered it. I wanted the glossy, thickly coated, sesame noodles with mild, slightly sweet and refreshing shredded cucumber. There is a nuttiness to these noodles that, unlike peanut butter, doesn’t linger. You can still brush your teeth after eating these and forego any sort of remaining nutty flavor in your mouth.  

The freshly shredded cucumber, interspersed throughout, kicked things up with even more crunch and cut through some of the creaminess of the sesame. What I love about shredded cucumber (or cucumber in general) is that it acts as the perfect palate cleanser, which for me, is essential when eating foods with richer ingredients or sauces.

If you ask nicely, I’ll request that my father does a “noodle shot” of him lifting the noodles in the air with his chopsticks.

My father went with one of his signatures, a homemade lamb noodle (rough noodles) in a pepper soup broth (medium spice), with added black mushrooms. His other repeated order, the sliced beef with homemade noodles. He and I are similar in the way that once we find what works for us, we stick with it. 

And, as a venerated and tenured Sai Kung resident, you know the noodles bring the literal and metaphorical gastronomic heat since he has ordered them at least once a week for more than a handful of years. 

A side note on that: the day before I planned on asking the sesame noodle vendor in Beijing out for a coffee, she waddled out from behind her noodle counter to greet a passerby. I realized at this point that I had never seen this woman from the chest down and that she was roughly 8 months pregnant. I didn’t end up asking her out.  

Come For the Noodles, Stay For the Sides

While noodles are in the name and noodles are the name of the game, you can rest assured that YKY is far from a one-trick pony. It’s also a formidable haunt to get your northern Chinese xian bing (beef pie) and steamed dumpling fix.

Xian Bing: Beef & Onion Pie

After a long day of work, I’ve been known on more than one occasion to head over to The Globe (on Graham Street) to pick up a steak and ale pie, along with six to seven draft beers, and call it a night. There’s something so indescribably comforting about a delicate pastry packed to the brim with savory fillings. There’s also something so indescribably comforting about the bottom of a pint of lager but I’ll save that for my next AA meeting. 

Xian bings, aka Chinese meat pies, are a classic Northern Chinese staple. They are savory crispy, thin pastries that are stuffed with ground or minced meat, spices (such as Sichuan peppercorn), and assorted vegetables, (mainly finely chopped green onions or celery), and are pan-fried. I mean, what’s not to love about everything in the above sentence?

YKY’s offers up several flavors of xian bings, including beef and onion (what I opted for), a standard beef pie, and two pork pies (minus the pinstripe suits and walking bass lines – let me know in the comments if you get the reference). For me, the beef and onion has always been the quintessential xian bing and my control test. It’s a snack I’ve eaten regularly and has a lot of nostalgia for me – as it was one of the first foods I learned how to order in Chinese when living in Beijing. 

Just know that no matter what you do and how many precautions you take, it’s going to flake all over you. But that’s part of the beauty of it. And, when the rich, juicy simmered beef paired with aromatic, sharp raw red onions hit your taste buds, you really won’t care. It was only at the end of the meal that my jeans looked like I gustatorily murdered the Pillsbury Dough Boy (I guess technically the murder would occur when I baked him in the oven at 350°F). 

Pale Ale Travel Tip: If you’re in Sai Kung and looking to continue your eating marathon, make sure to check out my post on ‘Rossi’s Pizza & Smoked Meats’, one of the best pizza restaurants in Hong Kong. It also happens to make my favorite brisket sandwich in the city. 

Pork & Coriander Steamed Dumplings

After having consumed upwards of 100 dumplings in one sitting (over the course of 16 hours) nearly 15 years ago at a Lunar New Year celebration in Beijing, I consider myself somewhat of a dumpling dilettante (the last word essentially meaning amateur and enthusiast). 

At the suggestion of my Fahza, I ordered the 10-piece pork and coriander (cilantro) dumplings, telling myself I’d make him proud and show my filial piety by giving him 6 rather than 4. It was only after I had devoured seven little pillows of minced pork and green magic that I remembered to offer him one. It turns out, he wasn’t planning on eating any. 

But after telling him if he didn’t eat one, I’d stop working and apply for mathematics PhD programs, his paternal instinct kicked in and he grabbed one – as he very well knew that my high school years in remedial math and C- in university-level stats were not enough to carry me through to sine and cosine glory. 

Honestly, I was surprised by the dumplings (in the best way possible). The dumpling dough sits somewhere between a thick Georgian manti and a thin, almost delicate gyoza casing. It was oddly translucent yet pillowy at the same time. The filling almost had a slight citrusy kick to it from the coriander, which provided much-needed balance to the slightly sweet, tender minced pork. 

I’m not one for giving ratings to dishes but this was exactly in my wheelhouse of what I consider to be a top-tier dumpling. My father also let me know that, on occasion, he will completely omit any noodle orders and pick up a twenty-count of pork and coriander dumplings for his dinner. That’s a glowing testament if I ever did hear one. 

Pale Ale Travel Tip: As I mentioned above, I’m a ramen man through and through. If you’re looking for a top-notch bowl of ramen on Hong Kong Island, make sure to check out my post breaking down my favorite ramen haunts in Central. 

Noodle Time isn’t Just About the Noodles

My green steed, the 101M minibus, which takes me to Hang Hau. It’s hard not to be reflective and thankful staring out the window on this after a great hang with the Fahza.

If you are looking for a reliable, quality noodle joint in Hong Kong, YKY will more than serve you well. Sure, it doesn’t get the glory of places like Mak’s Noodle or Tsim Chai Kee Noodle. But it’s a noodle haunt that will always deliver a baseline of quality and contentedness. It’s also another spot to make memories with those you care about the most. And that’s to be celebrated. 

As I mentioned in the intro of this piece, this is a call to set aside quality time with your family or friends. It has become something that I really cherish and look forward to more times to come with my old man. Remember, it doesn’t have to be noodles. It can be whatever you want it to be. 

So make that phone call or send off that text to a family member or top roll dawg/dawgette and have yourself some noodle time. 

If you have any favorite noodle spots in Hong Kong or any particular restaurants that you enjoy going to with your family and/or friends, let me know in the comments or via email (info@palealetravel.com). 

Eat well everyone,

Big Body