Regent parties herald handover

How do you commemorate an event as historic as the handover? Will it be like so many celebrations - all expectation and only a sore head to remember the party by? Most restaurants, hotels and clubs are remaining tight-lipped about the activities they have planned, unwilling, it seems, to be upstaged by competitors.

So it was a brave Regent Hotel that, with all the necessary fanfare, announced its one-hotel, two-party system.

Come June 30, ticket-holders will be able to enter the harbourside hotel ($2,500 for one evening's entertainment, $4,500 for two) and eat, drink and dance all they can at any of the five-star hotel's venues.

June 30 will be a very British affair with food pavilions from former colonies. There will also be an English pub where you can enjoy teas, pastries and a pint of ale.

Celebrity chef Jeremiah Tower will be at Yu, serving his New American Cuisine on June 30 and Asian Fusion American Chinese on July 1. Wolfgang Puck, chef and owner of New York's Spago and Chinois restaurants, will do his thing at Harbourside.

At midnight, bagpipers and drummers will wend their way through the hotel to proclaim the end of an era before delicacies of a very Chinese nature are served on July 1.