Dirty and decadent: Double D burger joint to go head to head with Hooters

Just days after US chain Hooters announced plans to open in Hong Kong, a local restaurant group wants to beat it to the punch, using sex appeal to sell hamburgers.

Maximal Concepts - whose restaurants include steakhouse Blue Butcher, high-end Chinese eatery Mott 32 and Tex-Mex joint Brickhouse - is behind the soon-to-launch Double D hamburger restaurant in Lan Kwai Fong.

But with a huge billboard featuring women clad only in lingerie, and a playful, yet questionable staff recruitment ad, the restaurant's plans are already on the radar of the city's equal opportunities watchdog.

The billboard in front of the new restaurant's Wellington Street premises features near-naked models suggestively holding burgers, and Double D's Facebook page has already attracted a fair amount of debate.

"Is it necessary that you devolve into the objectification of women to sell a cheeseburger? It isn't edgy. It isn't cool. It is overplayed, and so yesterday," said one post by a woman.

"Are you all sexist, chauvinistic pigs? Double D? Really. Change the name," said another.