Cover White Asparagus, champagne and scallion oil at Vicky Cheng’s VEA (Photo: Instagram / @vea_hk)
White Asparagus, champagne and scallion oil at Vicky Cheng’s VEA (Photo: Instagram / @vea_hk)
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From Japanese-South American fusion to Chinese-French cuisine, Tatler takes a look at the best fusion dishes around Hong Kong
There’s no accounting for tastes, and there’s often no explanation of why our tastebuds want to pursue authenticity or innovation. Fortunately in Hong Kong, a city comparable to a giant melting pot, chefs understand that bringing the best of both worlds together might be the key to their success.
While fusion cuisine might have a bad rep,we round up the restaurants and dishes that prove fusion is more sophistication than slapbang—from innovative Cantonese cuisine to Western dishes using local ingredients, and more.
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1. Whey
Using local ingredients and organic crops, Singaporean Chef Barry Quek is fusing Southeast Asian flavours with European techniques at his restaurant, Whey. The restaurant’s signature dishes include a reinterpretation of bak kut teh, as well as the brioche with buah keluak emulsion. For dessert, don’t look past the Maoshan Wang durian ice cream with caviar.
2. VEA
Vicky Cheng’s VEA, which combines Chinese and French cuisine, is well-known among local gourmands. Mixing Asia’s finest ingredients and French techniques, the restaurant offers an original—but nostalgic—reinterpretation of Cantonese classics. Make sure to try the Hokkaido sea cucumber with 20-year Shaoxing wine, the fish maw with phoenix eye fruit and black truffle, as well as the 28-head dried abalone pithivier with sweetbread.
3. The Praya
The Praya is a high-end, neo-Chinese restaurant located in the One-Eight-One Hotel in Sai Wan. Opened in 2023, its innovative menu combining Chinese and Western cuisines has already left a mark on the local dining scene. The signature dishes of the restaurant include the sourdough spring onion pancakes and the steamed egg custard and slippers lobster with aged Shaoxing wine.
The Praya
Address: 3/F, One-Eight-One Hotel, 181 Connaught Road West, Shek Tong Tsui, Hong Kong
4. Zest by Konishi
At Zest by Konishi, which opened in 2019, chef Mitsuru Konishi does what he does best, combining French techniques with Japanese ingredients and the occasional star ingredient from within Hong Kong’s borders.
Seasonality and creativity are apparent throughout, with the dishes on the tasting menu covering all the bases, such as in the Ping Yuen chicken and the Ezo abalone. The cocktails are also worth the detour.
5. Mono
Latin American cuisine is already rare in Hong Kong, but this past winner of Tatler Dining's Restaurant of the Year award has turned an obstacle into a strength.
Chef Ricardo Chaneton’s Mono fuses Latin American flavours of his native Venezuela with his techniques honed in the kitchens of Mirazur and Petrus to serve inventive dishes such as the Andean vegetable salad, the Brittanic blue lobster taco with 21-ingredient molé, and the Racan pigeon cooked on the bone.
Read more: Ricardo Chaneton wants to cook Latin American food for the world
6. Hong Kong Cuisine 1983
Highly technical, sometimes long-lost Hong Kong recipes are the name of the game at Hong Kong Cuisine 1983, but chef Silas Li, whose cooking style prioritises dishes that are technical for flavour’s sake, rather than simply a creative deconstruction. The restaurant’s menu, celebrating Cantonese dishes and western inspirations, are worth a detour.
Among the signature dishes are layers of steamed egg white; crab meat with huadiao wine and lily flower root foam served in an egg shell; as well as the braised pigeon stuffed with crocodile tail fin.
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Hong Kong Cuisine 1983
Chinese
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$ $ $ $
1/F, Elegance Court, 2-4 Tsoi Tak Street, Happy Valley, Hong Kong
7. Bo Innovation
Using molecular gastronomy, the cuisine of Bo Innovation’s chef Alvin Leung takes the familiar and brings it firmly into the future.
Serving Chinese and Cantonese food with French and Spanish touches, the restaurant’s menu straddles the line between the surreal and familiar. The opener is inspired by Andy Warhol’s seminal composition, Campbell’s Soup Cans, and involves bites inspired by various Asian soups; while Dogs Playing Mahjong riffs on Cassius Marcellus Coolidge’s Dogs Playing Poker, and comprises tiny tiles of geoduck, smoked abalone, Indian lettuce stem and shiso plum. The wine list is equally iconoclastic, and service is polished and friendly.
Read more: Devil’s in the details: Bo Innovation’s Alvin Leung and the new Hong Kong story
8. Arbor
As a highly acclaimed, two-Michelin-starred restaurant in the city, Arbor combines Nordic cuisine with seasonal Japanese ingredients. Arbor’s warm and inviting blush-hued dining room sets the scene for a show of inventive yet comforting highlights, such as the starter of fluffy seaweed brioche with soy kombu butter. There’s also “Nordic Sushi” with seasonal mackerel atop potato salad, the signature pigeon served with drumstick on the side, and revelatory madeleines.
9. Little Bao
Helmed by Chinese-Canadian chef May Chow, Little Bao is a homey restaurant that puts a fun spin on classic Hong Kong flavours.
Their signature dishes, if you couldn’t guess from the restaurant name, are baos—fluffy white Chinese buns that are often steamed or deep-fried. Alongside a host of other inventive, border-spanning recipes, the star of the menu is the slow-braised pork belly with sesame mayo hoisin ketchup and shiso leek salad—it’s been a staple on the menu since Little Bao first opened a decade ago.
Read more: The best breakfast spots in Hong Kong, according to chef May Chow
Little Bao
1-3 Shin Hing Street, Soho, Central, Hong Kong
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Salomé Grouard was Digital Editor and Front & Female Content Lead at Tatler Hong Kong. Primarily focused on managing Tatler Hong Kong’s digital platform and content, she also covers gender equality, the music scene and sports through interviews with industry leaders, experts and trendsetters.
Interview highlights include renowned conservationist Dr Jane Goodall, Korean actor Park Seo Jun, singer Jorja Smith, Chinese TV host Yue-Sai Kan, YouTuber Kimono Mom, Japanese rapper Awich, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighter Mikey Musumeci.
She has also produced stories on revolutionising sexual wellness in Asia, activism within the surfing community, Asian trans musicians reclaiming their narratives through music and looked at the toxicity of gym culture through the lens of the plus-size community. She also covers music festivals, such as Hong Kong’s Clockenflap and Bali’s Suara.
