Three designs that don't overpower the dish

Hong Kong's most talked-about new restaurants are garnering praise as much for their design as their food. Here's a look at three that stand out from a design perspective. Each mixes inspiration from different cultures and, in their own way, reflects the cuisine on offer.

The restaurant: Heirloom Eatery

The design concept: vintage chic

At Heirloom Eatery, on Hollywood Road in Sheung Wan, the design is based around the traditional white-and-green tiling that lines the ground floor. 'The owners wanted a bit of old Hong Kong, and these tiles are in all of the old apartments in the city. We worked around that, picking out the green,' says Candace Campos, who designed the interiors and the branding of Heirloom.

Carrying on the green theme, pressed leaves in picture frames dot the two-storey space. A friend of the restaurant's owners, Vivian Herijanto and Ashton Winkler, collected the plants on her hikes in Hong Kong and pressed them. Campos placed them inside antique frames. Added to this, a vertical green wall is formed by pocket planters to make a feature of one of the ground-floor walls.

Impressively, this is Campos' first restaurant project. With a background in graphic design, she was commissioned to create the logo and the menu graphics, but her synergy with Herijanto and Winkler led to her designing the interiors as well.

The name Heirloom refers to the heritage of the produce served at the restaurant (a bowl of heirloom tomatoes sits appetisingly on the open-plan kitchen counter), but Campos has also interpreted it in her design with the vintage feel.