Rockstar’s Saturday Night of TakeOut Comedy at Fat Angelo’s in Tsim Tsa Tsui

Family Night Out at Fat Angelo's / Rockstar telling the camera to talk to his hand... again! (I'm wearing MNG top and lime green necklace I stalked for months til it was maybe half-off at Harvey Nichols'... and still cost me HKD 1k thereabouts)

After blogging about Vivek Mahbubani following some Youtube videos of him that Kings found, we made the trip down to Parts Of Hong Kong We Rarely Venture To, ie Tsim Tsa Tsui, for family dinner at Fat Angelo’s and to catch TakeOut Comedy, voted #1 Entertainment in Hong Kong by Lonely Planet. Honestly, I love standup – Whose Line Is It, Laugh Factory… If not for fear of cigarette smoke (Kings is very fussy about this around his only child) we would’ve schlepped the Rockstar to catch Wayne Brady in Vegas (we weren’t sure there was enough smoke-free stuff to do there)…

Except as usual we get lost. 

Dead End?! So close and yet so far… Kings must’ve called the restaurant like, 4 times…

(I know, we’re hopeless. Please don’t read this blog for savvy on navigating the streets of TST with a gabbling 3 year old on your shoulders. The Rockstar was highly entertained though – and the only one who didn’t wake the following morning with a pollution-induced (I guess) headache… 10.15am today he’s zzzzz, 10.20am he’s Mum! We’re Going to Church! Uh, church is 10.30am and we actually made it there before Sunday school started, missing maybe the first worship song tops which just goes to show – get the Rockstar on board and life just gets better)

We got so confused going up and down this area because The Pinnacle seems to have the same address as Fat Angelo's (which is actually just round the corner from here) so the staff from the other bars kept gesticulating (not unkindly) for us to go up and down this street... Interestingly there seem to be significantly more Indian people speaking in their native languages than in our regular HK haunts

And then… like a beacon to travelers carrying gabbling small children on their shoulders…

Ta-ra-ra Fat Angelo's

Hurried shot of poster on door - we have like, an hour to order and feed Rockstar before the show

The waitress hands us a little box of crayons attached to a helium-filled balloon and shows us to our table. A cursory glance around our immediate seating area yields 2 or 3 other kids roughly Rockstar’s age and a kids’ set meal menu that includes juice and ice cream – of the kind that meets Rockstar approval – with biscuit wafers and cranberries/ raisins.

Needn't have worried... Rockstar had a ball with his food and the kids' menu complete with some puzzles, giant sticker and tattoo

Hurried, furtive picture of stage... Btw every seat in the place was filled - go early for a good seat

In a nutshell – we would, need to go again. Especially as we missed quite a chunk due to Rockstar’s erm, periodic stretching of little legs. It’s smoke-free and the material we caught is quite a bit cleaner than say, Laugh Factory in LA. Rockstar occasionally laughed uproariously when everyone else did – especially after one comedian (I think he was called Big Ben) put a condom over his head to do a spaceman impression. When Vivek does a toilet flushing/waterfall joke, Rockstar chirps, “I know what that is!”

A Balloon Animal. I Tink.

No surprises when we are told condom-on-head-wearer is a clown at children’s parties in his day job, with 2 kids of his own. I especially appreciated when he took the trouble to explain to Rockstar the condom was a balloon right in the middle of his erm, condom-wearing. Then he gave one to Rockstar. (Balloon. Rockstar. Got. A. Balloon animal.)

Oh, oh and look who dropped by the table!! Rockstar's swooning! (No not really. He is spoiling yet another perfectly good picture)... Vivek did this show, then rushed over to Soho for a Cantonese set - oh, and he also has a day job as a software designer..

I wish I could talk more about the show and all the other comedians too, but we didn’t stay for the whole thing since it ends at 11pm thereabouts in a part of HK we rarely venture to, and midnight is a little late to get back even for Had-a-2-hour-sleep-before-dinner-Rockstar. All I can say is – yeah they’re pretty funny, we laughed, Rockstar had a marvelous time and wants to go again (there were actually some comedians in LA’s Laugh Factory that were wayy less funny). So do check out the TakeOut Comedy website I linked to above, there’s a whole list of performers there too…

Rockstar entertaining himself with the light at our table

PS: We figured if it got too R-rated we would distract him, just that our habit is to take him out to experience most things we experience, except maybe skydiving or secondhand smoke – but we needn’t have worried, at least not on the night we were there – the comedy place is at the back of the main family restaurant anyways.