There are no live seafood tanks at The Legacy House. It’s not that sort of Cantonese restaurant.
Instead, you get the feeling that you might just be the live seafood, given the huge floor-to-ceiling windows that look out from the dining room onto Victoria Harbour. From the junks bobbing in the busy waters outside, the ferries criss-crossing from Central to Tsim Sha Tsui, the sparkling embankment over on Hong Kong Island, The Legacy House would be framed like a tank, a tableau of fine-dining excellence.
Like much of Hong Kong, this restaurant is recognisable to an Australian visitor, but different. We tend to understand Cantonese fare in our homeland, given the obsession we have with yum cha, the ready acceptance of dumplings and stir-fries into our nation’s cuisine.
Only occasionally, however, is it done with such polish. The Legacy House is luxurious, with its Michelin star and its dreamy views of Hong Kong’s bright lights and bustle. The dishes – double-boiled soup, steamed dumplings, fish with rice noodles, deep-fried duck – might sound familiar but here they’re pushed to an impressive degree of finesse, the best ingredients, the highest culinary skill.
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I’ve been in Hong Kong for about two hours. I arrived on a flight from Tokyo this afternoon, made my way into the city and dropped my bags at my hotel, then jumped in a taxi and headed across the harbour to Rosewood Hong Kong, which plays host to The Legacy House.
The challenge I have in this city is to discover just how much you can do, how much you can experience – and more specifically how much you can eat and drink in this place so well known for it – in a 48-hour stopover. A Michelin-starred Cantonese meal isn’t a bad place to start, and it helps that you can wander just a few metres from the restaurant over to the DarkSide, a classy cocktail bar that’s also in Rosewood.
“Welcome to the dark side,” says a waistcoated barman as he slides a coaster onto the bar in front of me and passes across a menu. This isn’t unusual for Hong Kong: this city has a thriving cocktail culture, a slew of bars with a wide variety of themes and vibes that all specialise in fancy drinks served late into the night.
A jazz trio strikes up at the far end of the room. Well-dressed patrons slip into cosy booths. A boozy cocktail finds its way onto the coaster in front of me.
This is the thing in Hong Kong: you can choose your own adventure. You can choose familiar or totally different. You can go luxury or cheap and cheerful. You can lean hard into southern Chinese culture or you can dive into the many ongoing iterations of Western ideas.
There’s no need to think too hard about where The Chairman fits in. It’s the next morning, I’ve still been in Hong Kong for less than 24 hours, and I’m preparing for yet another incredible meal.
This time it’s at a restaurant that is taking high-end Cantonese food to the world, keeping things traditional and yet still finding itself lauded on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list (No.19), and by Michelin (one star). The Chairman is old-school Chinese in many ways, and highly recognisable – the no-nonsense waiters, the white tablecloths set with chopsticks and small bowls – but the food? The food is shockingly, incredibly good.
I could go on for days. Chef Danny Yip has resisted the temptation to go Instagram-friendly here – the plating is simple, there’s not a single flower petal or foam in sight – but the dishes are the sort you would fly to Hong Kong just to taste.
There are Hokkaido scallops, so lightly steamed that they’re still blushing, kissed by the complex citrus notes of 20-year-old pickled lemon, served in the half shell on a bed of slippery noodles. There’s char siu pork, just a single big hunk, sweet and umami-strong.
And the show-stopper: steamed flowery crab with aged Shaoxing wine, fragrant chicken oil and flat rice noodles.
It’s very difficult, as a cook, to do anything to the subtle, tender flavour of crab to make it better, not to mask that flavour but to enhance it. This dish does that. Other diners turn to look at me as I eat it: they know what a transcendental experience this is. They want to watch as someone else has it. Wow.
A meal like that takes some walking off, which is why my first 24 hours ticks over while wandering around busy Central, aimlessly strolling streets and taking in sights and scents and the feel of a city in a state of flux.
Dinner tonight recalls the Hong Kong of old, some might even say the “real” Hong Kong, if there’s such a definition. I’m dining in Wan Chai at Sun King Yuen Curry Restaurant, where there’s no months-long waiting list like the Chairman, no stunning views like The Legacy House, no cocktails or any drinks at all like the DarkSide.
What there is, however, is two iconic dishes that you as a solo diner – or at least I as a solo diner – will have to choose between: stir-fried hor fun noodles with beef, or pork cutlets with Hong Kong-style curry sauce and rice. I’m pondering my choice as I wait in line to get into this no-frills, old-school diner when a whisper goes through the queue that they just ran out of noodles.
Pork curry rice it is.
This dish costs the equivalent of $20 and it’s enormous – two entire pork schnitzels hacked into bits, served on a mountain of rice with a bowl of creamy, spicy curry sauce on the side. It’s plated on plastic crockery at a table you share with whoever else happens to be there, and it’s outstanding.
But this is Hong Kong, so it’s time to switch up the adventure once again. A quick trip on the MTR (the city’s metro system) and a short walk takes you to COA, a cocktail bar that’s a love letter to Mexico, with its huge mezcal collection and mariachi-flavoured tunes.
Staff in vintage French workwear mix the cocktails, young locals and tourists hang out on couches, it feels like your friend’s garage until you spot the door staff with their earpieces and clock the fancy drinks being slid across the bar.
Just nearby there’s Bar Leone, recently crowned the best bar on the planet by the World’s 50 Best Bars list. This place is a homage to the casual bars of Roman neighbourhoods, but it’s one of those homages that surpasses its inspiration, one that serves fig leaf negronis and olive oil sours to a crowd of Hong Kong’s discerning drinkers.
My stopover in this city still hasn’t even ticked over to 36 hours. I will wake up tomorrow and tour the foodie hotspots of Central, calling into a “cha chaan teng”, or traditional tea shop, for Hong Kong-style French toast.
I will clock up 48 hours after having lunch at Lin Heung, a raucous, century-old dim sim joint where diners leave their seats to chase the food carts as soon as they emerge from the kitchen. Prawn dumplings, pork dumplings, braised chicken feet. This stuff is recognisable. And yet here, so enjoyably different.
THE DETAILS
FLY
Cathay Pacific has direct flights from Sydney and Melbourne to Hong Kong. See cathaypacific.com
STAY
The Park Lane is a smart, modern property in Causeway Bay, with rooms from $349 a night. See marriott.com
EAT + DRINK
Reservations for The Chairman open about two months in advance, and fill quickly; set menus start from about $268 per person. See thechairmangroup.com. Mains at the Legacy House cost about $75; see rosewoodhotels.com for bookings. Sun King Yuen doesn’t take bookings, and has no website – find it at 20 Spring Garden Lane, Wan Chai. For Lin Heung, see instagram.com/linheunglau. For the DarkSide, see rosewoodhotels.com. For COA, see coa.com.hk. For Bar Leone, see barleonehk.com
The writer travelled as a guest of the Hong Kong Tourism Board.
Ben Groundwater is a Sydney-based travel writer, columnist, broadcaster, author and occasional tour guide with more than 25 years’ experience in media, and a lifetime of experience traversing the globe. He specialises in food and wine – writing about it, as well as consuming it – and at any given moment in time Ben is probably thinking about either ramen in Tokyo, pintxos in San Sebastian, or carbonara in Rome. Follow him on Instagram @bengroundwaterConnect via email.