'Oh, that grill over there is new,' says Mark Cheng Ho-nam, pointing to a smoke-oozing stall. He's quite familiar with the cafe: most of the interviews he did in the 1980s when he was one of the most sought-after pin-ups in local show business happened there - including his last interview with the South China Morning Post, almost 20 years ago.
'This is where most actors would meet journalists in those days - because they all stayed upstairs when they were doing their media rounds,' says Cheng, referring to the New World Apartments. 'It was the usual arrangement by [1980s film company] Cinema City, which I worked for back then. For example, when we were doing publicity for [Tsui Hark's] Peking Opera Blues, all three lead actresses stayed there.'
Things have changed since then. Cinema City, after a period of prosperity in the 1980s, has long vanished; and two of the Blues' female leads - Brigitte Lin Hsing-hsia and Cherie Chung Chor-hung - have left the industry, while the third, Sally Yeh, makes only sporadic forays into the limelight, and only as a singer.
Cheng is no longer the twentysomething who dazzled audiences playing squeaky- clean, energetic men (as in his acclaimed debut in Cupid One in 1985, after he was spotted working as a model by director Ringo Lam Ling-tung) or righteous, hot-blooded heroes (he plays a revolutionary in Peking Opera Blues). The looks and affable charm are still there - he's just 42, after all - but he's no longer a regular here. For someone who once featured in eight films in a year (in 1990) Cheng's turnover has been slow in the new decade: his part as a cynical mercenary in Johnnie To Kei-fung's Election 2 will be his first appearance in a local production in three years.
Cheng's menacing enforcer, employed as a troubleshooter by Jimmy (Louis Koo Tin-lok) in his struggle for supremacy in the underworld, is eye-catching throughout the film.
Cheng now lives in Malaysia with his wife and runs a string of restaurants there, returning to Hong Kong only when an acting job comes along. The offer to perform in Election 2 came out of the blue, he says. He was on the phone to Law Wing-cheong, one of To's lieutenants and a longtime friend, and Law mentioned 'this character that would really suit me'.