Where can I eat a cobra (or any snake) in Hong Kong?

Where can I eat a cobra (or any snake) in Hong Kong?

6/24/2012 9:57:12 PM

I found an article on SFGate that gives details of a locality in Kowloon (emphasis mine):

And that’s where Kweilin, in Kowloon’s teeming Sham Shui Po, comes in.
Known far and wide as Snake Street, it’s the place to find the
freshest snake in town. How fresh? Fresh enough to try to get in the
first bite. Part of the fun of a Kweilin Street visit is watching a
waiter trying to wrestle a 5-foot python toward a chopping block.

UPDATE: I didn’t have time to look up Snake Street in Sham Shui Po. Instead, I found a restaurant called Ser Wong Fun (30 Cochrane Street) in Central. If you keep following the path of shops to the left of the Central-Mid Levels Escalator, you’ll come across this place as Cochrane Street is parallel to it; Ser Wong Fun is near the base of the one of the escalator legs. It is (supposedly) mentioned in the Michelin Guide (or something related to Michelin, there was a newspaper clipping in the restaurant), and it’s not that expensive.

Ser Wong Fun snake soup

Photo credit: Ankur Banerjee

A ‘five-snake’ soup cost 100 HKD; I asked the owner what kind of snakes were in it, but she didn’t speak much English, from what I can gather, it was an assortment of garden snakes. So my quest to eat a cobra is still alive!

My friend came up with a list of other restaurants in Hong Kong which also serve snake; again, we didn’t have time to explore those options. I include these two for the sake of completeness in case the research helps someone.

  • Shai Wong Hup, 170 Ap Liu Street, Sham Shui Po
  • See Wong Yan, 80 Woosung Streen, Jordan
3/30/2012 10:40:58 AM

Try Se Wong Yee, 24 Percival St, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong call (852/2831 0163).

This restaurant is famous for snake soup.

3/30/2012 7:14:59 AM

From the Wikitravel piece on Hong Kong and eating exotic meats, it sounds like there are a few restaurants that sell it and it’s likely legal. They even name restaurants that sell it:

While Hong Kong has long banned dog and cat meat and has strict rules
on importing many meats of wild life animals, snake meat is commonly
seen in winter in different restaurants that bear the name “Snake
King”. Served in a sticky soup, it is believed to warm your body.

About.com states that Kowloon is probably the place to go:

A favourite winter warmer in Hong Kong, snake soup is considered
somewhat of a gourmet dish. Most of the city’s snake meat is now
delivered chilled or frozen from China, but to try the meat and the
soup at its best you need to have it fresh, which means braving the
handful of live snake restaurants that still exist in Kowloon. Here,
you pluck your favourite python or cobra from behind a cage and watch
him slither to the chopping block, with more unusual snakes attracting
heavier price tags. The soup comes with the snake shredded inside,
although, if you’re braver, you can try sliced snake in a host of
other dishes. As it seems with almost all exotic meats, many say it
tastes like chicken.

But probably the most useful article (for you) comes from the Wall Street Journal which lists contact details AND a price:

Price: 800 HKD [~100 USD] (serves four). Cuisine Cuisine, IFC Mall, Central, Hong
Kong, tel: +852 2393 3933

The article was written in 2010, so there’s still a reasonable chance it’ll be around.

Credit:stackoverflow.com‘

About me

Hello,My name is Aparna Patel,I’m a Travel Blogger and Photographer who travel the world full-time with my hubby.I like to share my travel experience.

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