Little Canton

What’s the deal with Little Canton?

Spend five minutes in the front window of most restaurants and you’ll get a good sense of the distance they’ll go. We had that perch at Nan back in the winter, and wondered over an affordable dim sum deal to compliment their higher-end Huaiyang cuisine, if the passing crowds that barely seemed to see the place could be bad news for its long-term future.

Two seasons and a canny refit later, Ryon Weng and Ian Keegan have pulled the plug and pivoted to Little Canton, a cha chaan teng. We’re settled in the same spot, the glass between us and a growing queue fogging up from gasps at our lunch bowls, and the whole roast duck from the chef’s counter behind. Safe to say they've made the right move.

Cha chaan teng?

In a nutshell, it’s a diner done Hong Kong-style, with the madcap mix that comprises the international city’s cuisine at the heart of a largely cheap and cheerful menu. Despite what you might have seen on social and at least one national review (sigh), it’s not a new concept to Dublin – or even to D2. Eva Pau’s Hong Kong Wonton, where Duck used to be, brought the idea and much of the same interest to the area in the dying days of 2024, but just fifteen seats and a chaotic order-and-collection setup put a ceiling on its success (though they’re not taking the new neighbourhood competition lying down). Wen and Keegan lean into opportunity just as often as innovation, so scaling up a similar concept is small surprise – just look at Chongqing Hotpot.

What’s on the menu?

Steamy summer or no, don’t skip the soup (€3.50). A small bowl of the daily rotating special is as good an appetiser as it gets, light broth shot through with aromatic airs and golden fat from pork chunks plunked plentifully within. Rehydrated lily flowers bring crunch and complexity in every ladle.

You’ll get no clearer taste of the East-West fusion emblematic of Hong Kong cuisine than in the curry fish balls (€6.50), whose neon yellow soup has the distinctive bang of a suburban Chinese circa 1994. You’re clutching the wrong kind of pearls if you reckon these squidgy specimens are an acquired taste – we popped them like the down and dirty candy they are.

We still think back on the duck spring rolls we had at the late, lamented CN Duck (whose menu Little Canton brings to mind more than once) – we were nostalgic for their sub-€6 price point after chowing down these two (€9.50). Inflation, we know, but that’s a helluva leap the relative quality just can’t cushion. Save your spend for elsewhere.

Like, for one, the weekday lunch deal, where from 12:00 - 16:00 any roast meat is heaped on top of a generous bowl of rice for €9.99, with a €3/5 supplement to add one or two meats (plus €1 to debone the poultry), and €2 to upgrade the base to egg fried rice or noodles.

A final bowl of bone-in chicken and duck on fried rice (€14.99) is stellar value for the provenance of free-range chicken and Silverhill duck. The latter deserves all the window-side gawping it got, air-dried skin shattering to a treasure of melted fat beneath – we’d never dream of deboning and depriving ourselves of the joy of gnawing off every last ligament of marinated meat. But going again we’d skip the soy chicken, where neither skin nor meat are half as penetrated with flavour and feel flabby and lifeless by contrast.

Char siu pork hovers on the verge of the same turf, for all the eye-catching colour shot through these slices. This leaner-looking cut lacked the marbling we’d want to really achieve the signature succulence of this Cantonese BBQ classic – we’ve had a lot better.

Stick to the crisp pork belly, where skin and fat layers yield the same crack-to-chew ratio we relished in the duck. We had it over stirred lo ding instant noodles (€16, or €11.99 for weekday lunch), a HK classic whose nostalgic feels explains its popularity throughout the room.

Who’d have guessed the vegetables section would throw up one of the top talking points – though Nan’s green beans did the same. They’re back here too but it’s the salt fish aubergine clay pot (€15) that called out to us – and us to it, with squeals of joy at each chunk of fermented fish we found in the bubbling cauldron. We only wished there were more hiding amidst the ginger-rich stir fry.

It sums up the speed of service here that we were warned one dish might take up to fifteen minutes, as though it were an eternity, but twenty later there was still no sign. A complimentary portion of salt and pepper chicken wings (€6.50) was flown down to distract us – it did that and more. The great gush of meat juice that bursts forth from crisp skin is a lesson in why to never settle for less than free-range, and a vision of what the roast breast could be with the right rethink of the glaze.

The delayed dish was roast pork chop with tomato and cheese (€16), another HK staple ordered by at least half the tables around us. Too low an oven heat was the reason for the delay, and our cracked crater of a plate versus their gushing volcanos the result – the dried-out crusty cheese had all the pull of Temple Bar at 2am. Underneath we got more of the intended taste, with fresh and full-flavoured cherry tomatoes bringing tang to the typically ketchup-spiked sauce, and chunks of fried rice crisped off the piping plate like a paella’s socarrat. However even done right this would be too dense for our tastes. Not worth the wait, or the weight.

Hong Kong-style French toast whisked out to neighbouring diners didn’t look half as appetising as the Hong Kong Wonton take, not that we’d have had stomach space for something so soupy-sweet either way. A lighter option in the pineapple bun (€4) is where it’s at, stuffed with a fat pat of butter like the best jambon-beurre. This sweet, soft, salty confection will be a breakfast hit if they ever open earlier than 12. The name’s a nod to form rather than flavour, with the cross-hatched sugar coating a riff on Mexico’s concha.

There's more migration routes in the egg tart (€5), a play on the Portuguese classic but one whose crisp visible layers slope to a soggy bottom – skip it.

Anything to drink?

A small, serviceable wine list and better-fitting beers by the bottle are there for anyone in for dinner, but it’s the assorted hot and iced teas that you should sample for the real cha chaan teng vibes. A bear-shaped ice mould might yield Weng and Keegan’s best ROI yet if its ubiquity on TikTok already is anything to go by – made with tea rather than just water, it melted into our lemon tea (€5) without dulling the fresh flavours that were very welcome of a sunny summer afternoon. Hot milk tea (€3.50) is less tannic than the one we had at Hong Kong Wonton, both silkier and sweeter too – it would wash down a pineapple bun wonderfully.

How’s the service?

Briskly efficient – the walk-in only setup makes for some craned-neck queues and a heavy demand for the metal-topped tables to be wiped down and turned over, stat. Food comes fast, with wide-rimmed bowls leaving little space alongside blocky wooden cutlery caddies, so order in stages if you’re out to try a lot.

What’ll it cost?

Come for weekday lunch and you’d struggle to spend more than €20 unless you’re really doing the dog on it. But even a by-night blow-out with a whole roast duck, beers and sides to share wouldn’t likely see you inch over €50 a head.

So, should we go?

The “grand opening” balloon columns still fluttering in the summer breeze almost a month on speak as much to the lessons learned from Nan’s slow decline as the duck draped in the window behind and the heavy branding – give ‘em something to stop and stare at. They might not find food as good when they get in, but at least they’ll find it. Even great restaurants can’t survive empty seats.

Little Canton is a market spotted and served, sometimes very well, and almost always at a fair price. Between this, the branding and the outside optics, we'd wager a bet that this group are onto another winner.