New restaurants in Hong Kong offer niche dining experiences as bigger venues go bust
- It’s not all doom and gloom in Hong Kong’s restaurant scene as niche bistros in tune with current dining trends pop up to fill various voids
- Hong Kong’s large number of delivery options plays a key role in any new food business, says the pair behind Desi on Finnie in Quarry Bay
As some of Hong Kong’s larger restaurants have collapsed under the onslaught of the pandemic and the resulting social-distancing regulations, smaller takeaway and dining establishments have popped up to fill the void.
Often simple husband-and-wife enterprises with savvy social media skills, these niche bistros may be in more tune with current dining trends. Here are three that have turned crisis into opportunity.
Southside Lantau
Southside Lantau serves American soul food in the backstreets of Mui Wo, on the eastern coast of Hong Kong’s Lantau Island. Opened at the end of July, just as Covid-19 was having a minor surge in the city, the venue quickly found favour among locals.
“We’d taken out the lease in February and had been working on renovations and getting a licence ever since, so it was now or never as far as getting started was concerned,” says Jake Johnson, from the US state of Tennessee, who handles the cooking while his wife, Matilda Ho Shing-yan, looks after customers.
Chinese customers turned up in large numbers, lured by the chicken rotisserie in the window, comforted by the vague familiarity of beef jerky and gobsmacked by sloppy joes.
“A messy, juicy sandwich – a sloppy joe is every seven-year-old’s dream food, so it appeals to young Hongkongers as well as adult Americans with a taste for nostalgia,” says Johnson, whose fluent Cantonese is an additional draw.