Tai Po has a decades-long reputation as one of Hong Kong’s best neighbourhoods for street food, but the snack drawing the longest queues is not a fishball or an egg waffle. It is a Hakka rice cake from a tiny stall on the second floor of the Tai Po Market Cooked Food Centre. Sweet Bon Bon (滑嘟嘟) makes one thing better than almost anyone in the city: hand-wrapped glutinous rice dumplings stuffed with freshly roasted peanut and black sesame. With over 10,000 bookmarks on OpenRice and weekend queues that stretch past neighbouring stalls, this is one of those rare Hong Kong food finds that lives up to the hype.
What Hakka Cha Kwo Actually Is
Cha kwo (茶粿) is a traditional Hakka snack with roots stretching back centuries. The name translates loosely as “tea cake,” though the modern version has little to do with tea. The outer wrapper is made from glutinous rice flour, sometimes blended with mugwort or other herbs, giving the skin its distinctive slightly chewy, mochi-like texture. The filling varies by region: savoury versions use pork, dried shrimp, and mushroom, while sweet versions use crushed peanut, sesame, and sugar.
Sweet Bon Bon focuses on the sweet variety. The filling is a blend of roasted peanut and toasted black sesame, ground fresh in-house. The contrast between the soft, yielding rice skin and the crunchy, fragrant filling is what makes a well-made cha kwo so satisfying, and it is a texture combination you simply do not get from factory-produced versions sold at supermarkets.
How Sweet Bon Bon Makes Them
Each rice cake is made to order. The owner roasts whole peanuts and black sesame seeds on site, grinds them to a coarse powder while still warm, and mixes in just enough sugar to balance the nuttiness without overwhelming it. The filling is then wrapped by hand in a thin sheet of glutinous rice dough, shaped into a small round dumpling, and steamed or served at room temperature.
The result is a snack that hits multiple textures in a single bite: the outer skin is soft and slightly sticky with a gentle chew, while the interior is crunchy and deeply fragrant from the freshly roasted nuts. The sweetness is restrained, closer to a traditional Hakka sweetness than the sugar-heavy approach of most commercial mochi products. That restraint is what keeps people coming back. Each piece costs around HK$10 to HK$15, making it one of the best-value snacks in the New Territories.
What Else to Order
While the Hakka rice cakes are the headliner, Sweet Bon Bon also serves a small menu of traditional Cantonese sweet soups. The sesame paste (芝麻糊) is thick, dark, and intensely nutty, made from black sesame ground in-house. The walnut paste (合桃糊) is equally rich, with a smooth, slightly grainy texture and a deep toasted flavour. Both are served warm and make an excellent pairing with the rice cakes, especially on cooler days.
The glutinous rice balls (糯米糍) are another popular option, filled with the same peanut-sesame mixture as the cha kwo but with a softer, stickier skin. If you are visiting for the first time, order two cha kwo, one bowl of sesame paste, and one glutinous rice ball. That covers the full range of what makes this stall special, for under HK$60 total.
The Setting: Tai Po Market Cooked Food Centre
Sweet Bon Bon sits inside one of Hong Kong’s busiest cooked food centres, a two-storey complex above the Tai Po Hui wet market. The ground floor is a traditional wet market selling fresh produce, meat, and seafood. The second floor is a hawker-style food court with dozens of stalls serving everything from congee to roast goose. The atmosphere is noisy, crowded, and completely authentic: locals queue patiently with cash and Octopus cards in hand, eating at shared tables or standing at counters.
It is the kind of place that rewards the adventurous eater. If you are making the trip to Tai Po, combine the visit with Chestnut King’s artisan ice cream and Leung Bei’s soy sauce chicken, both within walking distance. For another traditional dim sum experience in the area, Old Fung Tea House is a short ride away.
How to Get There and When to Go
Take the MTR East Rail Line to Tai Po Market Station, Exit A1. The cooked food centre is a 6-minute walk from the station, directly above the wet market. Sweet Bon Bon is stall CFS29 on the second floor.
The stall is closed every Monday. On weekdays (Tuesday to Friday), hours run from noon to 8pm. Weekends and public holidays are busier, with hours extending to 9pm. The busiest period is Saturday afternoon between 2pm and 5pm, when the queue can take 10 to 15 minutes. For the shortest wait, aim for a Tuesday or Wednesday just after opening at noon.
Quick Info
| Chinese Name | 滑嘟嘟 |
| Address | 大埔鄉事會街8號大埔墟街市及熟食中心2樓CFS29號舖 Shop CFS29, 2/F, Tai Po Hui Market and Cooked Food Centre, 8 Heung Sze Wui Street, Tai Po 📍 Google Maps |
| Nearest MTR | East Rail Line to Tai Po Market (大埔墟), Exit A1, 6 min walk |
| Hours | Tue-Fri 12:00-20:00, Sat-Sun/PH 12:00-21:00, closed Monday |
| Phone | 9172 9433 |
| Price | HK$10-25 per item (under HK$50 per person) |
| Must-Order | Hakka rice cake (客家茶粿), Sesame paste (芝麻糊), Glutinous rice ball (糯米糍) |
| Payment | Visa, AlipayHK, Alipay, Octopus, Apple Pay, WeChat Pay, Cash |
