• Fri
  • Dec 26, 2014
  • Updated: 1:46am

Affinity Cafe

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 05 June, 2011, 12:00am
UPDATED : Sunday, 05 June, 2011, 12:00am

Affinity Cafe
G/F, 24 Gilman's Bazaar
Hong Kong
Tel 2850 5898

Grub: Mostly Western-style but the menu includes a few popular Asian dishes.

Vibe: Affinity Cafe is a small 'hole in the wall' eatery down a narrow alley. The staff are friendly and happy to offer suggestions and details of dishes. During the afternoon, a wall-mounted TV shows local game shows.

Who to take: It's a very small place so no large groups. But it is the kind of place that you could pop into on your own for a quick snack should the mood take you.

What's hot: The restaurant is open from 7am to 10pm and offers breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The breakfasts do look interesting. All the usual egg, bacon and sausage combinations are there, but there are also less common items such as oatmeal with egg white, and the Italian-style scrambled egg with smoked salmon could be well worth it.

As we were there in the early evening, our attention wandered to the other side of the menu, but not before we'd ordered some Vietnamese-style deep-fried spring rolls.

The dinner section of the menu consists mostly of pizza, pasta and baked rice. There are a few salad options and an Angus rib-eye steak with truffle sauce. The pizza toppings were all very familiar, such as pepperoni, Hawaiian and garden - all worthy contenders, but our hearts were won over by the squid ink pasta with shrimp.

The spring rolls were okay. They were piping hot and had to be left to cool. The dipping sauce tasted more like Worcester sauce than anything normally associated with Vietnamese cuisine.

The pasta was much more memorable. Squid ink pasta always looks impressive, particularly so against the red of the tomato sauce and the pink shrimps. The sauce itself was fresh and tangy. The only thing lacking was a sprinkle of parmesan cheese.

There is a small handful of desserts. The chocolate brownie is served warm with fresh fruit cuts on the side. It was pleasant enough but a scoop of ice cream is always the best match for a warm brownie.

What's not: There's no Parmesan. It's difficult to get a seat at peak times; if you go for lunch, try to arrive before 12.30pm or after 2.30pm.

Cost: A full American breakfast sets you back HK$58, and all other breakfast items are HK$20-HK$35. At dinner, you can feel well fed for HK$100 each


For unlimited access to:

SCMP.com SCMP Tablet Edition SCMP Mobile Edition 10-year news archive




SCMP.com Account