August 22, 2021
At age fourteen you attempted to make puff pastry. It seemed completely reasonable at the time but, then again, skateboarding in traffic also seemed reasonable. You began rolling out layers of dough and butter. Immediately it became clear that the butter was belligerent, the dough oppositional defiant, and the rolling pin a weapon of mess destruction. Hours later, having managed to butter and flour all the interior surfaces of the kitchen – and yourself and your dog -- you were tracked by your floury footsteps to the far corner of the house collapsed in defeat. But at least you dared!
Soufflés, space flight, happy marriages, Olympic medals, mountaineering, and homemade puff pastry all have one thing in common: daring. Daring requires you to dream, to consult your fighting spirit, to apply everything in life that you’ve learned, and to leap into the unknown. Of course, knowledge, planning, strength, and good sense must accompany daring in order to succeed, but daring is the leap itself. No achievement is possible without it. Cheeky Dog, a hot dog restaurant in Kennedy Town, open less than a year, dares.
Its heart is the dogs themselves: 30 Days Aged Beef, Pork-Apple, Chicken, and Kasekrainer Cheese. Each is notably flavorful and juicy. The Kasekrainer Cheese Sausage, from beef and pork, is most similar to a traditional hot dog. It’s delicious though you hardly taste the cheese in it, if at all. The pork-apple is slightly sweet, appley, delightfully balanced. The chicken conveys the delicate essence of chicken, thankfully without horrifying flecks of cartilage you’ve encountered elsewhere. The beef hot dog is not just generically meaty, but distinctly beefy. For all your loyalty to all-beef Hebrew Nationals, Cheeky Dog’s beef dogs are beefier.
The buns are brioche-like, far outclassing supermarket fare. They’d fit right in at a swell breakfast toasted with butter and jam. This makes sense because they come from Bakehouse, bakery extraordinaire.
Their Plain Jane is just that, a plain beef hot dog in a bun with just mustard, ketchup, and housemade caramelized onion. It’s like the best ballpark frank you’ve ever had.
Cheeky Dog’s fanciful offerings though are what really make it special. Sweet Digs is sausage coated in Panko and deep-fried. There is a housemade rosemary-ginger-pineapple compote, back bacon, and Katsu sauce. The complexity of this preparation is a prescription for failure. Yet it unexpectedly soars, the flavors layering instead of muddling. You particularly like the texture of the Panko against the meat and bread and the way the salt of the bacon plays against the sweetness of the compote.
Numb Cheeks, housemade Mapo Tofu slathered on a dog, shouldn’t work, it’s far too much of a non-sequitur like pickles and peanut butter. But it’s fabulous, possibly your favorite dog in the pack. The fine-ground Szechuan Peppercorn makes you crazy with pleasure. Would there be some way a customer could up the dosage? A shaker of the stuff perhaps. It was slightly too hot for your wife.
The Ooey Gooey has five melted cheeses and housemade onion marmalade. Sweet and cheesy and meaty and bready, if destiny chooses you for death by cholesterol overdose, may this be the cheese-bomb that causes it, so you’ll depart this mortal coil happy.
Hot Mess is a bacon wrapped sausage, with housemade pico-de-gallo, hot sauce, and Greek yogurt dressing. You and your wife fought over this one. Having survived two weeks in quarantine together, which will stress-test any marriage, this wasn’t going to bring you down, but you could feel the strain. If your relationship isn’t robust, this doggy is too delicious for sharing.
Sides are where restaurants often slip. Not here. Their Nachos with pulled pork was terrific. The chips crisp, the pulled pork flavorful, with real melted cheese, not the ubiquitous liquefied cheese glop that’s so often inflicted.
The potato flavor of their shoestring potatoes really shone through, though they could have been a little crisper, a little hotter. Would it be possible to double or even triple fry them like they do at Rubia and Jean May? You’re almost certain that would loft them even higher.
You were impressed by Cheeky Dog’s thoughtfully curated beverages, not the standard Tsing Tao and Coke Zero. Your wife’s Gingergella Karma drink was by far the best ginger-ale either of you have ever had, zingy with fresh ginger taste. You had two great, hoppy brews, an Australian and a New Zealand. But Hong Kong is now producing many superb craft beers. Why not showcase them?
The interior is a handsome (your wife says, “cute”) sparkling clean nook that is not visible from the street, giving it a sense of exclusivity. Service is prompt and personable. Their music track includes a lot of 70s–80s gold which warmed your gizzard. The restroom is immaculate.
Prices are amazingly reasonable, dogs starting at HK$58. The most expensive is HK$98. Cheeky Dog is excellent for a date or a bunch of pals. Excellent for kiddles with food they’d surely like. Excellent for a good brewski or glass of grape.
All restaurants are daring simply because they’re such risky enterprises. But Cheeky Dog is particularly daring because it has chosen the humblest of foods, a hot dog, as their ride to glory. (Oh so wisely, they’ve avoided puff pastry.) You admire their audacity and imagination as much as the excellence of their chow. It’s top dog! Credit goes to the visionary founders (who still work the floor) Bibiana Ling and Joe Chan.
You and your wife loved Cheeky Dog. Few restaurants at this price point deliver such consistently excellent food. You highly recommend it. Go.
Rating (on a scale of 0 to 5)
Food overall: 4.5
Ambience: 4
Service: 4
Overall greatness: 4.5
Restaurants are intuitively rated within their particular realms. So Michelin restaurants, pizza places and stand-up sandwich joints are judged against like restaurants, not each other. A 5 for a high-end restaurant is not meant to be the same as a 5 for street food.
From my website, here’s how I rate food: “I believe the quality of a restaurant’s food is vastly more important than any other factor. Even if I love a restaurant’s food, I’m very conservative about giving out 4’s or 5’s. I reserve 4’s for food that is uniformly excellent. Preponderantly excellent tends to get a lower score. 5’s are for food that is uniformly stunning.”
This meal was comped.
Cheeky Dog
Hoi Tao Building, 7-11 Belcher's Street, G/F Shop 29, Hoi Tao Building Located BEHIND, Kennedy Town, Hong Kong
info@cheekydoghk.com