3 of Hong Kong’s best Japanese restaurants with modern tweaks
From rustic home-made dishes to traditional Osaka cuisine with a contemporary touch, this trio of dining establishments offers some pleasant surprises
Hongkongers love their Japanese food. Restaurant listings website OpenRice has about 2,200 entries in its Japanese category, compared to about 2,500 entries for Cantonese, Hong Kong’s representative and most common cuisine.
But while most Japanese outlets offer traditional culinary styles such as sushi and yakiniku, a few new places are putting a modern spin on the cuisine. At Koko, for example, there’s plenty of raw fish, but it’s nothing like a traditional sushi restaurant.
“As there are so many traditional Japanese restaurants already, we wanted to offer something different,” says Koko’s head chef Alex Wong.
The restaurant calls itself an izakaya, a Japanese pub of sorts, with a menu of rustic, home-made dishes that go well with drinks. But with its oversized terrace and sleek, moody decor, it’s worlds away from the rowdy places found in Tokyo neighbourhoods. Instead, Koko’s takes its inspiration from the concept of “social dining”, as Wong calls it, reflecting the fact that izakaya are also popular spots in which to socialise.
The restaurant is a collaboration between private members’ club Kee and former Japanese soccer star Hidetoshi Nakata, who now promotes Japanese sake culture, not least through his own brand, Sake ‘N’. Not surprisingly, it offers a wide range of sake matched with food.