Everyone has a bit of Ted Danson in them, by which I mean everyone wants to have a place to go where "Everybody knows your name". Somewhere warm, familiar and comforting, where you don't get struck by menu FOMO or quickly browse FourSquare and Instagram under the table before your friends arrive just to make sure you order the right thing. Sometimes you just want to walk into a place, order what you always order, safe in the knowledge that it will be exactly what you want.
In a city as fast-paced, transient and frenetic as the +852, this type of place can be hard to find.
Mine is Capital Cafe in Wanchai. And in case you're asking, no, you can't have it. It's mine, so bugger off.
Sadly, despite my best efforts and faultless weekend breakfast attendance record, the waiters still don't appear to know my name or, if I'm being honest, don't really give two sh*ts about my presence. But hey, it's Hong Kong, and if you don't like aloof service go somewhere else (apart from mainland China, obviously).
I love it anyway.
Capital Cafe is an old school HK cha chaan teng which serves up comforting HK-style breakfasts at a breakneck pace to eager crowds from early 'till late. So far, so boring, I here you yawn. But wait! There's more!
Well, not much more, but they do serve up the best scrambled eggs on toast (finished with milk from Hokkaido) that HK$28 is going to get you this side of the Australia Dairy Company in Mong Kok. I would also implore you to try their deep-fried-pork-chop-in-a-bun (make sure you ask for it "devilled", with the wasabi mayo), which you should absolutely and unashamedly consider as a side order if you are feeling heroic.
The peanut butter and condensed milk on toast is exactly the satisfying sugar-express of your wet, diabetic dreams, and it would be unwise not to wash it all down with an HK-style milk tea. I have heard distressing things about the "half and half" coffee and tea though, which, despite being a proud tradition of this type of establishment, sounds all sorts of wrong.
I love this place so much I have "gone native" and now regularly join the other patrons in wolfing down the macaroni and ham in chicken broth before my scrambled eggs, which, let's be honest is just plain weird as a starter at the breakfast table.
Don't expect fancy. Do expect queues and do expect your out of town friends to love its old school Hong Kong charm (f*ck you Tung Po). Just don't expect them to use your name, however often you loudly refer to yourself in the third person in breakfast conversation every Sunday morning.