Secret restaurant hides ugly side of Hong Kong's gentrification
Charley Lanyon
A new Sheung Wan restaurant is getting a lot of buzz because it's hidden behind the false front of a traditional Chinese stamp shop.
Diners have to locate the correct stamp - or, more accurately, chop - and press it, to open a sliding door that reveals the real entrance to the hipster hideout.
While I've heard almost entirely positive things about the food served inside, something about this concept rubs me up the wrong way.
Located off Hollywood Road, it's on the very frontline of Hong Kong Island gentrification, where rising rents routinely squeeze out local traditional businesses - dried-fish sellers, herbal pharmacists - to make way for trendy, spendy shops and restaurants. Housing one of the most gimmicky restaurants in town in the literal shell of a traditional business is just tacky.
Yes, I know the stamp shop was never a store. But isn't faking the façade of an endangered species of business to flog the very thing that's endangering it even more of an insult? They couldn't take the time to find and preserve the real thing?
It gets better. Guess what they sell inside? Street food. Sorry, street food "with contemp-orary flair". Remember when Hong-kongers used to have easy access to actual street food before it was forced off those streets now ruled by luxury handbag stores, under the flimsy pretence of public health safety and Sars prevention? I don't.
But at least now those of us privileged enough to know how to get through the front door (and willing to spend HK$58 for half a corn-on-the-cob rolled in cheese) can enjoy a better-than-authentic street food experience in a traditional - though actually brand new - Hong Kong locale.
This is progress?
