The Shortbread Company, Tai Po

One thing's a given for Hong Kong Islanders after the energy they're going to expend working out how to get to Tai Po, and this is that they'll be looking for a place to top up their batteries when they finally get there.

Into this category, if it could sort out a number of shortcomings, might come a place called The Shortbread Company. Open seven days a week from 7.30am to 6.00pm, the restaurant-cum-bakery is located at 16 Nam Shing Street not far from the Railway Museum (2654-6328).

You'll know you're near when you see a Shenzhen-style reproduction of the Union Flag jutting out on the street. The same lack of attention to detail is apparent inside the restaurant, where the blackboards offer "coffe" and "broccolli". (Even their business card manages to misspell Hang Seng Bank and to call the East Rail Line the "North-East China Railway Line".)

We didn't try the broccolli, but two of us had the coffe and it looked like mud and tasted like mud. Mud with a splash of chicory, perhaps, but mainly mud. Which was rather baffling, as one of the numerous blackboards was dedicated to coffee ("fair trade", no less), informing us that the day's set meals were being accompanied by Brazilian beans, while Ethiopian were available à la carte.

Drinks are not this place's strong point, as the orange juice my daughter ordered tasted like orange squash with a dash of guava and her cousin's iced lemon tea came with no syrup, until he asked, and even then was inferior to the stuff served up in a traditional cha chaan teng. To complete a dismal beverage performance, the waitress brought hot milk with the order for breakfast tea.

All this is pretty disappointing in view of the fact that the eatery sells itself on its "UK homebaking" – hence the fake Union Jack. As for the food, at HK$60 a throw, the full English is 50% more expensive than you'd find at any decent club around town and not so full. Our two voracious teenage appetites were disappointed that the serving of baked beans was so small and missed the hash browns that are standard elsewhere. The three adults each had the "mini breakfast" (one egg, one sausage, two rashers of bacon, half a half-cooked tomato, one slice of buttered toast), which was fine (except I wish they would baste the egg whites so the area around the yolk is actually white rather than translucent and yucky), but twice what a breakfast sets you back at a cha chaan teng.

Even if the fare served at The Shortbread Company, and the cooking, is in a different league to that of a local greasy spoon, this will not cut much ice with locals (of whom there were several in the place) in the long run, I fear, so long as the price differential is so marked. But, first, they need to sort out the drinks.