Diner’s Diary‘Fine dining isn’t popular, hotel buffets don’t work’: Chef Uwe Opocensky prepares to shake up hospitality

Second generation hotel owners at places like Rosewood, Shangri-La and Fullerton see need for change, says German in Hong Kong as he drops hint about new job

Closing his self-named restaurant was ‘a bittersweet moment’, he says, but ‘my dream got bigger’ and ‘someone offered me a bigger slice of the cake’

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Uwe Opocensky works on a dish in the Beef & Liberty kitchen. The German chef is returning to the hotel trade, but to which one?

Published: 12:15pm, 20 Aug 2019Updated: 12:15pm, 20 Aug 2019

Last week’s announcement that German chef Uwe Opocensky had closed his eponymous restaurant and would leave the group behind the Beef & Liberty restaurants to return to the hotel industry surprised the Hong Kong hospitality industry.

So which hotel was he going to work for? We had to find out.

Reached on Monday, Opocensky was playfully evasive.

“I got an amazing offer. Six or seven months ago different players came to me and I saw the possibility to grow further. It has nothing to do with my restaurants’ performance,” he says, referring to Restaurant Uwe in Sheung Wan and the upmarket burger chain’s restaurants.

Uwe Opocensky was formerly executive chef of Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong. Photo: Jason Joseph Bonell

The German, previously executive chef with the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong, says he told his current employers about the proposition four months ago, but only informed staff late last week.