If you are looking for a Chinese restaurant with Western sensibilities, and if Lung King Heen is fully booked and you don’t have a membership at the China Club, then Duddell’s is your place. Opened in May, this high-end Cantonese kitchen atop the Shanghai Tang Mansion is a good place to entertain clients and overseas visitors. That is, if you don’t mind paying HK$1,000 a head for everyday food.
Duddell’s is the brainchild of local socialites Alan Lo, Paulo Pong and Yenn Wong. Lo is the founder of the Press Room, Pong runs a wine distributor, and Wong is responsible for 22 Ships and a pretentious Italian joint on Hollywood Road called 208. At the helm in the kitchen is chef Siu Hin-chi, whom the trio poached from the Michelin-starred T’ang Court.
Duddell’s offers traditional Cantonese fare: crispy chicken, barbecued pork, fried prawns and winter melon soup. The quality is no better than your regular hole-in-the-wall siu chao (stir fry) kitchen, but the prices are about five times as high. Dishes in small servings cost HK$250 to $300 a pop and the tasting menu will set you back HK$980 per guest. Then again, no one goes to Duddell’s for its food.
While the dishes are overpriced, the wine list is surprisingly accessible – thanks to Pong’s connections in the wine world. At Duddell’s, you can wash down roast duck and fried rice with a nice German Riesling for under HK$350 a bottle.
Designed by Ilse Crawford, the dining room cum art gallery is tasteful, homey but disappointingly windowless. The space doubles as a venue for art events during off hours and is the kind of see-and-be-seen place where mood lighting flatters and a uniformed staff works hard to please.
Although the food itself is nothing to write home about, the swanky bar and salon upstairs is a different story. After dropping a small fortune on dinner, walk your guests up a flight of stairs for a round of dry martini. The well-appointed bar, flanked by a small library and an outdoor terrace, provides plenty of space where you can hang out for the rest of the night to get your money’s worth.