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Kwong Wa Street is no differ from any other and here I finally spy a squeezed-in restaurant with steamed-up skylights and clients loitering outside. This must be it: Tim Ho Wan, the Michelin-starred dim sum mart that has put Mong Kok on the gourmet chart.

Normally, Michelin-starred restaurants aren’t my scene. I don’t eat in locations where the eyebrows of Armani-clad attendants twitch at my brandy choices. But there’s no accident of being ushered outside at a maitre d’hotel with a suave smirk at Tim Ho Wan. I’m given a scribbled number along a disturbed matron at the door and shooed into the street.

I sigh and exchange comprehending looks with others clutching tickets and inhaling moped exhaust. Taxis honk and my stomach rumbles.

When I eventually brim through the gate one hour later, I ascertain Tim Ho Wan’s no-reservations policy the fewest of its quirks as a Michelin-starred canteen. Meals usually price fewer than $HK170 ($20). Kitchen paper replaces cloths. There’s no San Pellegrino – alternatively any bottled water, for that material – yet you tin array Coca-Cola alternatively Sprite, served in the can. And if there are anyone other Michelin experiences that allow you to nibble on a chicken’s foot, I’ve additionally to have the pleasure.

Shortly, I’m seated by a laminated chart elbow-to-elbow with regional diners shearing through steaming stacks of dumplings for whether aiming as a Guinness world disc. Woks clang in the minuscule open pantry at the behind. Chef Mak Pui Gor is here, lurid in a neon-green shirt, smiling benignly in the hubbub. But there’s not time to gawk; the hour’s wait doesn’t acquire me a feeble lunch. I’ve merely fair circled my alternatives aboard a paper menu and the edible has seemed.

I start with a dull sum classic: steamed prawn dumplings, the pink prawns blushing beneath translucent rice-paper mantling. Beef meatballs are infused with mandarin skin and spring onion. And, although I’ve never held a lofty attitude of spring rolls, Mr Mak’s come peppery, frail and stuffed with fresh vegetables.