Illustration: Yum Cha Now, AI-generated. It sets the scene and is not a photograph of the venue.
Hong Kong's best known trolley teahouse is not in Central any more. Lin Heung Lau (蓮香樓) gave up its Wellington Street premises in April 2026 and reopened in Sheung Wan, which means a good number of dim sum lists now send readers to an address where no carts run. The second thing to know before booking: since 1 January 2026 Lung King Heen has applied a minimum spend of HK$700 plus 10 per cent service per person, so it is no longer the cheaper of the city's two two-star dim sum lunches.
In this guide
What changed in 2026
The MICHELIN Guide Hong Kong & Macau 2026 is the 18th edition and was announced on 19 March 2026. For dim sum it barely moved: two stars each for Lung King Heen and Tin Lung Heen, one for Duddell's, and the Sham Shui Po branch of Tim Ho Wan still in the Bib Gourmand selection. None of that is a reason to change plans.
Two other changes are. Lin Heung Lau now occupies the ground to second floors of Tung Ning Building on Des Voeux Road Central, beside Exit B at Sheung Wan station, and the hand-pushed trolleys came with it. And Lung King Heen's minimum spend of HK$700 plus 10 per cent applies to every diner aged 12 or over, so a family of four is committed to about HK$3,080 before the first basket lands. Tin Lung Heen's five-course set lunch is HK$618 a person, service on top. The cheaper way into a two-star dim sum lunch is now the one across the harbour, which is the opposite of what most guides still say.
Where can you still get trolley dim sum?
Fewer places than the guidebooks imply. Trolley service is a shrinking habit in Hong Kong rather than a fixed feature of it, and the rooms that keep it going are mostly old, large and cheap to run.
That survey counted ten rooms citywide still pushing carts. Two are straightforward to get to and keep long hours.
1. City Hall Maxim's Palace (大會堂美心皇宮)
The room seats around fifty round tables and takes bookings, which matters more on a Sunday than a Tuesday. The useful detail is that 9am opening on Sundays and public holidays: it is two hours earlier than the weekday start and the only early weekend service among the places in this guide. Arrive at nine and you walk in. Arrive at eleven and you take a number with everyone else who read that the carts are worth seeing. Hours and telephone from the LCSD city hall facility page.
2. Lin Heung Lau (蓮香樓)
The Wellington Street teahouse closed in April 2026 after the building it sat in was redeveloped, having already shut once in 2022 and come back in 2024. The Sheung Wan premises are larger and brighter, and the trolleys survived the move. Treat the hours as unconfirmed: the reopening was a soft one and no hours have been published, which is a real reason to make it a second stop rather than the whole morning's plan.
The two-star dim sum lunches
Both of Hong Kong's two-star Cantonese hotel rooms serve their dim sum at lunch only. Booking a table for dinner and expecting a steamer basket is the most common mistake readers report, and neither kitchen will improvise one.
3. Lung King Heen (龍景軒)
This was the first Chinese restaurant anywhere to hold three MICHELIN stars. It holds two in the 2026 guide, and the har gao and the baked barbecued pork buns are still the reference points other kitchens are measured against. What has changed is the arithmetic. The minimum spend is published on the Four Seasons page and counts children from twelve, so a table of four starts at roughly HK$3,080 with service. If you were treating a two-star dim sum lunch as an affordable splurge, check that figure against your plan first.
4. Tin Lung Heen (天龍軒)
Chef Paul Lau's barbecued pork is the dish to order, and at HK$618 the set lunch now undercuts a minimum-spend lunch at Lung King Heen by a wide margin. The weekend catch is the two fixed seatings: the 11:30am slot has to be out by 1pm, which is fast for a meal built on waiting for the next steamer. Book the 1:30pm seating if you want to linger. Hours and set prices are from the hotel's own dining page.
5. Duddell's (都爹利會館)
Duddell's holds its star in the 2026 guide and sits in a restored building with a working art programme, which is the reason most people book it. Read the floors before you do: the all-day dim sum sits on the fourth-floor Upper Room menu, while the star belongs to the third-floor dining room. Arriving for a starred dim sum lunch and being seated upstairs is an easy disappointment to avoid.
The cheap end, and the queue
6. Tim Ho Wan, Sham Shui Po (添好運)
The MICHELIN listing tags this branch "worth queueing for", which most visitors take literally and then stand outside for forty minutes. The detail nobody advertises is in the same listing: the branch handles its own bookings, so a phone call on 2788 1226 is worth trying before you join the line. It runs over two floors, opens an hour earlier at weekends, and keeps serving past nine at night, which makes it one of the few places on this list where dim sum is not a morning-only proposition.
What to order, and what to drink
Order in two rounds rather than all at once. Steamed items go cold fast, and a second round means the har gao arrives hot instead of sitting under a lid while you work through fried things.
Seven dishes that tell you whether a kitchen is any good
| Dish | Cantonese | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| Har gao | 蝦餃 | Shrimp dumpling. The skin should be translucent and hold when lifted, with pleats you can count |
| Siu mai | 燒賣 | Open-topped pork and mushroom dumpling. Should taste of pork, not of starch |
| Char siu bao | 叉燒包 | Barbecued pork bun, baked or steamed. The baked version is the harder one to get right |
| Cheung fan | 腸粉 | Rice noodle roll. Thin enough to see the filling through it |
| Egg tart | 蛋撻 | Custard set but still wobbling, pastry that shatters |
| Chicken feet | 鳳爪 | Braised in black bean sauce. An acquired taste and a fair test of the kitchen |
| Turnip cake | 蘿蔔糕 | Pan-fried, crisp on the outside, soft rather than gluey inside |
Tea, briefly
| Tea | Tastes of | Goes with |
|---|---|---|
| Pu-erh (普洱) | Earthy, aged, dark | Fatty dishes: pork ribs, barbecued pork buns |
| Oolong (烏龍) | Floral, lightly oxidised | Seafood dumplings and scallop siu mai |
| Jasmine (香片) | Light, scented | Almost everything; the safe default |
| Chrysanthemum (菊花) | Cooling, faintly sweet | A long meal with a lot of fried items |
Tea is charged per person at most teahouses, and it appears on the bill whether or not you drink it. At the older rooms a tap of two fingers on the table is how you thank whoever refilled your cup.
When to skip all of this
If what you want is the theatre of the trolley, the two-star hotel rooms are the wrong booking. Neither pushes carts, both serve dim sum at lunch only, and at Lung King Heen the bill starts at HK$700 a head before you have chosen anything. Go to City Hall Maxim's Palace at nine on a Sunday instead and spend a fraction of it on a room full of carts.
The reverse also holds. If you want quiet, a fixed price and a window, the old teahouses will disappoint you: shared tables, hard chairs, a lot of noise and a bill that depends on how many baskets you stacked. In that case take the HK$618 set lunch at Tin Lung Heen and treat it as a different meal, which it is.
Addresses, hours, prices, telephone numbers and star counts in this guide were checked on 30 September 2026 against each restaurant's own site, its MICHELIN Guide listing, and the LCSD pages for City Hall. Three things are deliberately left open rather than guessed: Lin Heung Lau's hours at its new address, per-basket prices at City Hall Maxim's Palace, and Duddell's MTR exit, which its own site does not publish.
Questions readers ask
Eating your way around Hong Kong
Next: the best Cantonese restaurants in Hong Kong, where to find a good egg tart, the cha chaan teng shortlist and five bowls of congee worth crossing town for. For the starred rooms beyond dim sum, see our guide to Hong Kong's MICHELIN-starred restaurants.