Boston Restaurant

It’s Hong Kong, in the early ‘70s, and you want a steak. Where do you go? Most likely, to Boston.

Boston Restaurant, that is. Open since 1966, Boston is one of Hong Kong’s longest-standing, so-called “soy sauce western” restaurants, places that serve a local interpretation of European food. During the previous century, there were several places in Hong Kong serving this cuisine. Today, Boston is one of only a scant handful that remain.

The centerpiece dish of the genre is steak, here served on hot platters. Boston’s Sizzling Dish Sets come with soup (one option is a curiously beet-free borscht), a soft roll served with butter, a drink, your choice of beef and sauce, and rice or spaghetti—a combination of ingredients and dishes that likely would have been outlandishly exotic to Hong Konger of the ‘60s or ‘70s.

The sizzling platters arrive loaded with French fries, broccoli, baby corn, tomato, cauliflower, and canned champignon mushrooms, in addition to the steak. Staff make a show of pouring the sauce on the platters, which results in a massive cloud of steam; pros know to protect their face with a napkin. The astoundingly hot plate continues sizzling for minutes after you’ve been served.

Boston is particularly known for its beef brochette flambé, a skewer of beef prepared on a cart tableside with Chinese rice wine and lots of flames, as well as for its baked Alaska—and, of course, its iconic neon sign.