‘So Boring’: The vegetarian hole-in-the-wall operated by Occupy veterans

Burrowed away in the quiet back streets of Yau Ma Tei, a group of amateur chefs crowd around the cramped kitchen space of “So Boring” night after night, trying to conjure up enough dishes for the regular flow of vegetarian visitors.

Though the place itself is not much bigger than a shoebox, it’s anything but inconspicuous. Passers-by struggle to hide their curiosity as they try and comprehend the provocative artwork and blaring rock music on the otherwise deserted street.

So Boring

Diners spilling out onto the street

The hole-in-the-wall restaurant serves up vegetarian-only food at an unstated cost. Visitors are invited to pay “what they want” for the likes of Rice with Numbing Spicy Mince “Meat”, Potato Strings, Seared Tofu and Soy Sauce and Baby Spinach Salad with Oil and Vinegar. All diners are asked to do is drop a donation into the little red bucket outside.

This lax approach to payment has resulted in both generosity and greed.

“We don’t actually look at what people give, we just count the money at the end of the day,” Hong Kong-Canadian restaurant worker Nin explained. “We know people steal money, but we’ve had people come and buy a coffee and a slice of cake and give HKD1,000.”

As well as being an excellent spot for Hong Kong’s thrifty veggies, the restaurant also has a pretty unusual back story. The founders of So Boring were part of the original Occupy movement from 2011 to 2012 in the basement of the HSBC building.

So Boring Poster

Enough said about the decor

When the protests were finally disbanded, the team behind So Boring looked for a way to keep the ethos of the so-called Umbrella Movement alive.

“The thing about Occupy was that it was very dislocated from any kind of community,” Nin explained. “We wanted to take what we were trying to do in that space and plug it into an actual neighbourhood,” he added.

The menu here changes daily and tries to incorporate influences from all over the world. The idea behind this was to expose local diners to dishes they might never be able to access otherwise, such as French (Nin’s speciality) and Middle Eastern cuisine, alongside very traditional Chinese food.

So Boring kitchen

The teeny kitchen confinements

That night, the menu featured Rice with Numbing Spicy Mince “Meat” (vegetarian replacement), Potato Strings, Seared Tofu and Soy Sauce; Duo Fried Mushrooms with Rice and Purple Sweet Potato Paste; Wolfberry (goji berry) Leaf, Almond and Water Chestnut Soup; Soy Pickles & Pepper Soup and Dragon Fruit Yoghurt Jello.

The mince “meat” dish was by far the most popular with diners that evening, and for good reason too. Although the chefs only used simple ingredients, the tofu brought out a strong, charred taste, which really added to the kick of the spice.

The homemade, vegetarian soups were also memorable elements – especially given their rarity in Hong Kong. The warming bowls packed in tonnes of wholesome flavours, without all the unpleasant artifical additions of your average shop bought cuppa.

With around 30 to 40 people meeting every night, the group has a considerable number of mouths to feed in order to sustain their community. The majority of the So Boring staff members had no experience of running a kitchen or cooking en masse before the venture, which has meant that the past two years have been “kind of like a laboratory experiment” according to Nin.

Experimental or not, Nin’s got a pretty sentimental vision for the future of So Boring:

“We just want to run the place better, but running the place better doesn’t have to do with more money or business. The values and principles we have in our collective guides how we run this place ultimately.”

Check it out yourselves, Coconauts.

7pm onwards (Tuesday – Sunday). So Boring, 6 Tak Cheong Lane, Yau Ma Tei


Got a tip? Send it to us at hongkong@coconuts.co.




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