Birdie Bar Restaurant

Birdie Bar Restaurant is a small, long-established Cantonese place on Waterport Road, run by a Hongkonger who settled in Gibraltar more than fifty years ago. It has 2 Tripadvisor reviews at 4.5 and 3.5 on Google from 37, for an Index of 3.80. We re-read the reviews on 6 September 2026; the newest is from May 2026, so the picture is a few months old.

The warm reviews come from people who eat in or know the place. Hong Kong visitors call it a pilgrimage, with decades of human warmth in the food and a friendly Hakka welcome; regulars who lunch there most Fridays praise lovely staff and fair prices; the salt and pepper ribs, Singapore noodles and deep-fried wontons are named, and the Tripadvisor pair found the food hot, fresh and tasty with polite, helpful service. A staff member, Lai-sin, is thanked for serving a couple who twice arrived near closing time.

The Google takeaway reviews tell a different story, and there are more of them. From 2024 through May 2026 reviewers describe bland, cornflour-thickened dishes, watered-down hoisin, flavourless salt and pepper ribs, soft prawn crackers, a crispy chilli beef called terrible, and portions too small for the price, with one £28 order going straight in the bin. A 2025 reviewer says a staff member shouted at her when she walked in by mistake.

So the split runs between the dining room and the delivery bag: eat in and it reads like a cherished old local, order out and it reads like a poor takeaway. One 2022 review is mostly about the owner and his other restaurants rather than the food, and we give it little weight. Portion size was already the one point on which the two Tripadvisor reviewers disagreed.

Come to eat in for home-style Hong Kong cooking from one of the Rock's oldest Chinese kitchens, ordering the ribs, wontons or Singapore noodles; be more cautious about takeaway, where most of the complaints come from. Nobody from Gibraltar Index has eaten here; this write-up is from the reviews, which are thin on Tripadvisor and divided on Google.