Matt and Cat\'s Isle of Wight Eating Out Guide
What excitement! Matt and Cat’s favourite Chinese restaurant has opened a new branch in Newport. Visitors to the Ryde branch will recall how the...
Hong Kong Express, Newport

What excitement! Matt and Cat’s favourite Chinese restaurant has opened a new branch in Newport. Visitors to the Ryde branch will recall how the Hong Kong Express interpretation of a fast-food joint made such an impression on your reviewers: well, now the Hong Kong Express magic has been applied to a town-centre pub. The result is different, but still pleasing.

A recent squid special dish at Hong Kong Express, Newport

Matt and Cat slipped into the new venue just a few days after it had opened, late on a chilly Sunday afternoon when every other place in Newport was pulling down the shutters. The venue was quiet, but by no means deserted. They were greeted by the exquisitely polite barman, who seemed to be a restaurant professional struggling gallantly with the instinct to seat his customers and retreat politely, in the style of a restaurant; whilst they were tending to wander randomly up to the bar and chat, in the style of a pub.

The menu is more or less the same as in the other Hong Kong Express branch – good, basic Chinese food – with the significant addition of a large English supplement. Matt selected chicken with cashew nuts and fried rice; Cat set out to test the English dishes, and chose a butterfly chicken burger. The extremely fast production of freshly cooked food at very cheap prices is just as well-advanced in Newport as it is in Ryde: the food arrived before Matt and Cat had finished ogling the lovely decor, stylish lighting and spectacularly tasteful fresh flower arrangements. Both meals were very good. The butterfly chicken was one of the most impressive examples of the genre that either Matt or Cat had ever seen, and Cat, on sampling it, pronounced that it had a subtle Chinese flavour to it. This, when dining in the Hong Kong Express, can only be a good thing.

Once more, the Hong Kong Express has risen to the occasion. The new Newport branch has a more cosmopolitan, city feel to it – as befits its origin as a town pub and cafe bar. However it has brought along all those elements which have so marked out the original fast-food bar in Ryde: excellent fresh food, extremely swift service, and startlingly low prices.
Hong Kong Express, Newport

  • ghostmoth says:

    I’ve been a regular customer at HKE over the years and the food has been consistently good, reasonably priced and served quickly. However, we’ve been disappointed with our last couple of visits. The food is just as good but the service is diabolical. Two bored teenage girls gave us the worse service we have ever had anywhere. One of them reminded me of that Victoria Wood sketch Two Soups as she took an age to travel from the kitchen with our soups, only to spill a substantial amount on the table. She then left with no apology or offer to clear up the mess! We won’t be going back until they decide to employ decent waitresses.

  • Lou says:

    In agreement with Heather…I too have ordered vegetarian meals and had the same experience 3 times! The food never arrived, although I complained each time and either took it with me or got a refund. However, I now don’t bother going there as I was getting tired of going out for lunch and returning to work hungry!!

  • Heather says:

    I went for a meal with friends. I’m not a very fussy vegetarian, but as they had all finished their meals, mine never arrived. Undaunted I joined in a take away order with work colleagues. How delighted I was when the vegetable spring roll I bit into contained meat. We rang back expecting, perhaps, an apology and certainly for the correct order to be dispatched, and were called liars. No apology or replacement. Will not let them fool me a third time and I tell friends to avoid. There are better chinese takeaways in Newport in terms of quality of food, choice and service.

  • andy says:

    I and 3 of my friends went to the hong kong express in newport on friday last week. We had very good experience there. Food was tasted and fast, one of my friend was first time to try Chinese food, she wasn’t sure about which main course she should has, the manager in the restaurnt he came to us asked us need any helps with friendly attitude, he was very polited and patient to explain every single main course my freind pointed out with his help my friend had lovely main course in the end. it was quite busy in the restaurant, but we felt very welcome and enjoyable, thanks for those people! I will strongly recommed! Five stars restaurant!

  • Nole Jones says:

    …Food was tasty but very poor service and found a piece of metal in my Singapore noodles….was not amused at all. Due to this, I shall not be revisiting Hong Kong Express any time soon in the near future and therefore will not be recommending it to my friends and fellow colleagues.

  • D says:

    Due to my wife and I’s horrendous workload, last Thursday we decided to set up a travel cot for my daughter and camp ourselves in my office until about 10 in the evening catching up on our work.
    To cheer ourselves from a rather dour situation we decided to order in a takeaway for dinner. Not living in Newport I resorted to ‘Googling’ for takeaway menus on the net. As Hong Kong Express Newport are the only guys canny enough to think of doing this (as far as I could find), by default they got my business.
    We ordered some great sounding specials Shanghai Crispy Chicken and Hong Kong Crispy Chicken with
    Beansprouts with a starter of Sesame Prawn Toast and waited a short period of time before delivery… A rather surly driver then turned up describing the staff in the branch as ‘f***ing idiots’ for not giving him the full address. Interesting.
    Then the food… In short dry grissly chicken, a nice sauce on one, a pretty bad sauce on the other, chewy rice and overcooked Sesame Prawn Toast. In fact it was all just a bit, well… chewy!
    A pretty bad first impression and I will take the time to pick up some menus from other establishments before ordering a takeaway in Newport again!

  • Sean says:

    After a very surreal night at the Quay Comedy Club (we have never seen the crowd end up booing and heckling the crowd – not the performer!) we wanted a meal after 10. Hong Kong Express was open and lived up to its name. We sat down and before sipping our drinks our meals arrived, very nice, great price and super fast. Perfect for a late meal.

  • Jonathan says:

    Restaurant clean -ish! Service / staff poor – not organised / and all over the place. The food was not bad for the money, but it took ages to arrive and it did not all arrive together !Get a decent manager to run this place and clean it up a bit then it should be great !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Steve Davis says:

    The family have eaten here regularly and found the food to be good and the service to be fine – havent had any problems to date. Infact we had a good chat with one of the team about the puddings which persuaded us to try some out and they were very enjoyable !

    Sometimes seems a good idea to book.

  • paul moreton says:

    hi i am the owner and i thank you for the comments i would like to point out that the staff in mine and lots of other peoples opinions is there are very helpful but do lack some English politeness their culture is very much say the question direct with no please or thank you i am working on them to say it in a much nicer way but if you can forgive them for being abrupt they are nice friendly people who will do all they can to help PS the girl who looks like she is a pit bull chewing a wasp is the funnest girl i know and will have a laugh and joke when you get past the face come in and try if you have a problem ask for the manager billy he will gladly help you .

  • Sammy says:

    I love the food, there is a good choice and the prices are great, but the staff are awful, they are very rude and definatly should not be working with people.

  • Abbie says:

    I Love this place and last time i went it took about 5 minutes for our food to come 😀
    Their food is great!
    Going tonight with my girlfriend .. cant wait!

    Abs

  • irving says:

    i went to the restaurant today and one of the girls staff was rude to me. i wnet to order my food and she asked me”what do you want” in a bad way. I really think the owner should talk to this person. thank you

    Irving

  • irving says:

    ummm well i gota say that the food is well nice but teh staffs are bad:(last time that i went there it took them like 40 mins to bring my food(roast duck).

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