When Allan Zeman bought a site in the heart of Lan Kwai Fong 18 months ago, he knew exactly what sort of restaurant he wanted to add to his California Group stable. His brief to Branko Pahor, the designer, was visually specific: 'I often drive down Hollywood Road at night, and look at all those beautiful antiques in the windows, and I always used to think, 'Why can't we have a restaurant that looks like a shop on Hollywood Road?' 'I'd wanted a Chinese restaurant for a while but you need a lot of space for that. I'd always had my eye on this site. It used to be an old disco, dark and dingy, like walking into a cave, but I knew it had potential - it's 4,200 square feet, it has two levels and it has high ceilings.' China Lan Kwai Fong officially opens this week. It is the biggest of all the California Group restaurants (which include Indochine 1929, Thai Lemon Grass and Zona Rosa) and, yes, in the best possible way it looks like a shop in Hollywood Road.
There are cabinets filled with celadon, terracotta and jade. There is a X'ian warrior guarding the front window. There are stained glass panels on the walls. There are old lamps on sidetables and glass lanterns hanging from ceilings which have been carefully painted to simulate crackle glaze. Nothing is for sale, however, except the food.
If it all looks pleasantly familiar, then that's inevitable. Apart from anything else, there's a certain cinematic quality - perhaps it is no coincidence that it was sourced from a road called Hollywood - about such modern quaintness.
'When we did Thai Lemon Grass we'd gone immediately to Bangkok,' says Pahor. 'The inspiration for that came from walking around, visiting places in Thailand. But we're in China already, so for this one we went to look at the Luk Yu Teahouse and the China Club.
'We didn't want to be either of them - Allan doesn't want to copy anybody - but we wanted to capture a feeling of China from a bygone era.' The effect is curiously closer to a Chinese version of the Titanic than to a landlocked diner (with the added advantage that ice in Lan Kwai Fong is generally confined to people's glasses). The unusual fact that the space stretches all the way from Lan Kwai Fong back to D'Aguilar Street, with natural daylight visible at both ends, conveys the impression of some self-contained vessel.
The fronds of greenery, the golden pools of light, the starched napery, the silver chopsticks and the dark wood panelling add to the sense of a luxurious voyage along the Pearl River delta in an earlier part of the 20th century.
That illusion happens to be a by-product of the restaurant's dimensions. But Zeman and Pahor spent months carefully sourcing items which would welcome diners to another time.
