Hong Teh is a Chinese restaurant located in the Ambassador Hotel in Bangkok that has been in operation for around 60 years. It has a traditional Chinese decor and an extensive menu containing many classic dishes. It offers 11 private dining rooms and an all-you-can-eat dim sum lunch for 359 baht that includes over 40 items and fried rice or noodles to finish. The menu also has seafood, soups, barbecue dishes, poultry, beef and pork options making it a good representative of traditional Chinese cuisine.

1. Hong Teh is the Chinese restaurant in the venerable Ambassador Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 11. The restaurant could also be described as venerable since it’s been around as long as anyone can remember, probably since the hotel opened in the early 60s. Also, its décor places it in the category of ultra-traditional Chinese restaurants with all of the dark heavy wood and ornate decorative accessories. The menu follows suit as it is pages long and contains every traditional Chinese dish that you can think of. There are a few I’ve not seen before too, like fried shark fin with scrambled eggs. Maybe it’s just as traditional as the rest of the menu and I don’t know it, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before on a menu. Hong Teh has another feature that any traditional Chinese place must have and that’s private rooms. Lots of them. Eleven to be exact and they are as much a part of traditional Chinese restaurants as abalone and bird’s nest soup. And one more thing that many Chinese restaurants in Bangkok feature is an all-you-can-eat dim sum lunch. At 359 baht++ it’s a good deal here and there is a large selection to choose from with over 40 items. And the end of the meal fried rice and noodle dishes are also included. I don’t know why the Chinese save the fried rice or noodles for last but they do. I should ask someone why but there’s probably no clear-cut reason. I also had soup with the dim sum lunch and the Szechwan-style soup that I tried was pretty good. Not as good as some I’ve had at dedicated Szechwan restaurants but certainly respectable. That’s another thing about this menu – there are several Szechwan dishes on it. I haven’t had the chance to try any but the soup but it would be interesting to see if they are authentic because there are no real Szechwan places in Bangkok that I’ve ever been able to find in the last 13 years. Everything is Cantonese here with very few exceptions.Anyway, seafood is another big must for a true Chinese restaurant and Hong Teh doesn’t disappoint here either. In fact, there’s a whole page on the menu just for prawns and scallops and also plenty of fish dishes, a good selection of crab entries, shark’s fin of course, and abalone and sea cucumber. There is a good selection of soups, too, and some barbecue dishes including that most traditional of Chinese dishes, whole roasted Peking duck along with a whole suckling pig, pork spare ribs and crispy pork belly. There is a section on the menu for poultry, beef and pork also, that is not large but contains some interesting looking dishes including a sautéed rack of lamb with black pepper sauce and baked lamb with red wine sauce, a couple of dishes that are not common. And to end the meal are the obligatory rice and noodle dishes and there’s a whole page of them with the fried rice and scallops with XO sauce the one that I want to try next. Hong Teh is definitely a traditional place but there are a few little surprises here that make it an interesting place and with the very reasonable prices it’s a place to check out the next time you’re in the mood for some venerable Chinese food.