Wai Lung Seafood 威龍 @ Lei Yue Mun

When a Chinese visit an aquatic park like SeaWorld, the only think that would cross his or her mind would be, “Are they edible? How should I prepare that fish?” Lei Yue Mun in Hong Kong allows you to do just that.

Lei Yue Mun “鯉魚門” or Carp Channel is named after a short channel between Tseung Kwan O (Junk Bay) and Victoria Harbour separating Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula. Historically important as the eastern gateway into Victoria Harbour it is now renowned for hosting the world famous Seafood Bazaar.

Lei Yue Mun left a deep impression on me when I was only 10. The first time I went to Hong Kong in 1982, I was treated to a seafood dinner in Lei Yue Mun by my dad’s business associates. I brought Princess here when she was 10 with her godparents and she loved the place. So this stopover in Hong Kong, she requested we go there again for seafood.

Strictly speaking Lei Yue Mun is the name of the channel, and of the district next to the channel. The village itself is a combination of four squatter villages which are today some of the rare examples still left of this style of rural living. The first village you reach when you visit Lei Yue Mun is Sam Ka Tsuen (三家村), which is where the harbour, typhoon shelter and the main restaurants are located.

The process of dining at Lei Yue Mun is very different from what you might expect in a typical restaurant situation. First you will select your seafood from the live seafood stalls, choosing the type of seafood and specifying the quantity of each you want. This is where the tourist trap comes in. To the unknowing tourist, you will get excited and start picking what you like. The price they quoted are unit price, and when everything is weighed, you get a huge bill. This same trick is used in all live seafood restaurants around Asia, not just here.

So it is always prudent to ask the unit price before you pick the seafood as they tend to deteriorate out of water. And that’s when you can return them back into the tank. Once all the seafood you want have been selected and weighed, you’ll be told the final price. You can bargain a little more and round down this price, but there’s little wriggle room as they need to share the profit with restaurant owner if the stall is recommended by them. If you have not pick the restaurant, the stall owner will be able to recommend a nearby restaurant where you can have them cooked, and they will help to carry the seafood to that restaurant.

The fees you pay at the restaurant are for prepping the seafood and cooking the food and not for the seafood itself, usually 20-30% of the seafood price. Of course the restaurant can and will offer other dishes such as meat or vegetables, as well as main dishes and drinks. You will pay for this directly to the restaurant as you would in normal eateries. And if you have a regular place that you frequent, like this particular occasion, they would be able to reverse the process and recommend a good seafood stall that they work with all the time, so you would not fall into the tourist trap.

While Chinese cuisine is typically communal, with all dishes served at once to share, seafood is the exception because they taste the best right out of preparation. Different seafood have different prep time and temperature to maintain the best texture and doneness. So the best seafood restaurants will pace the timing of each dish. Tonight we were having geoduck clam, rock lobster, bamboo clam, wild caught grouper, and sea whelks. We added a few more dishes and drinks at the restaurant, and it turned out to be around HKD 900 (USD115) per pax.

First up, geoduck clam sashimi 象拔蚌刺身. Geoduck is a mollusc that looks like an elephant trunk and squirts when out of water. But under the muscle that looks like male genitalia is sweet, crunchy flesh that is perfect as a sashimi. Usually the first course as the least amount of preparation is required.

Next up, bamboo clams sautéed in fermented black bean sauce and pepper 豉椒炒蟶子. Like the geoduck, bamboo clams are easy to prep, and like all mollusc, require very rapid stir-frying technique to ensure the texture remains crunchy and the natural sweetness is not lost to the heat. The bamboo clams were julienned and sautéed with fermented black bean and served on a bed of pan-fried egg noodles that soaked up all the sauce. Very good eat.

Next, a dish that is finished at the table side. 啫啫鍋 Tzetze casserole is style made popular in Guangzhou in recent years, named after the sound made by ingredients meeting the sizzling hot casserole and oil. It results in instant caramelised and Millard effect on everything the superhot surface touches. The water spinach, aka kangkong, was sautéed with local made prawn paste and garlic to about 80% doneness and then finished at the table side in the superheated casserole. The smell of the prawn paste filled the room and the vegetable was just cooked right.

As there were only four of us, the grouper fish was only about 800g. But it was prepped perfectly, doneness and taste, letting the sweetness of the fish shine through. While they said it was wild caught, I suspected that it was farmed.

My host added salt and pepper cuttlefish 椒鹽魷魚 from the restaurant menu, which tasted like deep fried calamari found in pubs. The manager recommended that we order their salted egg yolk version in future.

The rock lobster finally made its appearance. Rock lobster with e-fu noodles in superior broth 上湯伊麵龍蝦 is Princess favourite seafood dish, something we used to order almost every week when our home kitchen was under renovation. This version has a broth thickened with too much cornstarch IMHO. But the flavours were delicious and the lobster was sweet and succulent.

It was the last dish because spicy wine-boiled sea whelks 辣酒煮東風螺 takes the longest time to cook among all the seafood we had picked for dinner. The staff at the seafood stall picked every whelk individually, so when they were cooked in the spicy wine sauce, the whelks turned up beautifully. Each whelk can be picked from its shell using the toothpick without any resistance, signally really fresh whelks.

At the end of dinner, they threw and a free tofu and seafood soup (no photo, too busy with the whelks), made from a fish broth made from a lot of fish bones. And after we were done with all the hot dishes, they gave each of us a fresh fruit platter (very generous) that consisted half a R2E2 mango and half a Hawaiian papaya, both just ripe and very sweet. The seafood was cooked perfectly that only HK chefs know how. And the service we got that evening was impeccable. A great and memorable dinner.

There are multiple ways to get to Lei Yue Mun but the most iconic way would be a short ferry ride from the Sai Wan Ho Ferry Pier on Hong Kong Island straight to Sam Ka Tsuen. I suggest to go back via this way as you can then enjoy the beautiful harbour lights as you cross one of the most iconic waterways in the world.

Wai Lung Seafood Restaurant 威龙海鲜酒家
17 Hoi Pon Road Central, Lei Yue Mun
鯉魚門海傍道中17號
Tel : +852 2340 1003

Visited Jul 2026