Rubin Verebes is the managing editor of Foodie and is very opinionated. Transforming his hobby of eating and drinking into a career, he shares his account of Hong Kong’s F&B scene and the worldwide state of dining in Rubin’s Take, a monthly opinion column.
As a food journalist in Hong Kong, I admit that the hype around new restaurants landing in our restaurant scene can, and in periods of sustained gloom or dark darks (literally during the wet summer months) typically do, make a bigger splash and noise than other happenings going on.
The construction boarding is removed to reveal a fresh new concept, journalists, influencers, and budding foodies flock to try the new menu, Instagram hype is abuzz, and reservations pile on board. The soft opening of any shiny Hong Kong restaurant is where the energy begins for any new venue. For how long that can sustain is a different question.
I am not like your typical Hong Kong diner. My profession and hobby for dining multiple times a week to complete research means I am constantly eating at new restaurants. For those who dine less than I do, settling for local neighbourhood dinners, or constantly revisiting their favourite lunch haunts, a new restaurant popping up from the ground presents a golden opportunity to escape the similar.
Our brains like novelty. The novelty of new restaurants landing in our face with a new menu and concept that may have never existed before in Hong Kong. Our brains are dopamine-producing machines. A thing we have never experienced before feeds us with our much needed dose to continue succeeding.
I love a new restaurant opening, that is my human nature, but this comes at a cost. When the early 2020s shut-in produced a healthy mass of local consumption across restaurants city-wide, Hong Kongers now fleeing intermittently for holidays in 2023 and 2024 has rendered our old goldies and gems forgotten. Why isn’t there love given to restaurants that have been around for years and honed their craft?
This year’s closures of Insomnia nightclub, Shatin Inn Restaurant, Outback Steakhouse, and SEVVA, to name a few on the long laundry list of venues calling it quits, tells a story of our forgotten love for spots that need the support more than ever.
Yes, the blame cannot be put solely on our crazed attention on new restaurants, issues of Shenzhen’s pull, weak Japanese yen, and strong US dollar have complicated the bounce back of Hong Kong’s F&B industry. But I believe more attention, and our money, should be placed on the restaurants now achieving veteran status. They became veterans because we have patronised and continue to patronise them when support is needed.
Every latest closing in Hong Kong draws as much attention as a new opening, just with pessimism about the future of the city’s restaurant scene and depression. This is bizarrely countered with hope and celebration when a shiny toy is presented to us with the wrapping paper ripped open.
It was a great story to hear when Hong Kong’s oldest dim sum restaurant – 100 years to date – reopened in April earlier this year. Lin Heung Lau has seen lines longer than its pre-2018 heyday, prior to its two closures in 2019 and 2022. This is the type of energy we should show restaurants that have existed throughout our lifetimes in Hong Kong.
Restaurants that have survived pandemics, financial crashes, and protests warrant your patronage. They have become picked in history and a part of the street, neighbourhood, and city. Bo Innovation has continued a mission set out 20 years ago to innovate on fine dining Chinese cuisine, so too the 18-year-old Sichuanese restaurant Chilli Fagara.
The Peak Lookout has been serving diners since 2001. Top cha chaan teng Mido Cafe saw its establishment in 1950. The local history of Hong Kong’s veteran Tai Ping Koon dates back to 1938. Hong Kong’s first French restaurant Gaddi’s was founded in 1953. The top dai pai dong Oi Man Sing opened three years later in 1956. Gaylord Indian Restaurant has been open since 1972.
There is no right to slight new spots finding their feet in Hong Kong. It is a joy to see a business take the place of another fallen venue that keeps the energy of a restaurant alive. But right now, we ought to give the same attention to the scene’s recent entrants as the spots celebrated over years and decades.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author’s and do not represent or reflect the views of Foodie.
