These restaurants took home Best-in-Class awards at Tatler Best Hong Kong & Macau 2026

Best Service: Jean-Pierre

At this Parisian-style bistro, service arrives with a certain brio. Not showy, not laboured, but something looser, more knowing—a room that understands precisely what a good night should feel like and gets on with delivering it. You are gathered in, not processed, a table settling into place as if it has been waiting all evening. Bow-tied captains weave through the room with practised ease, setting the pace without ever appearing to hurry. There is movement and rhythm, the kind that comes from a floor run on instinct rather than instruction. Glasses are refilled at just the right moment, plates land without ceremony (save for the quiet theatre of a chocolate poured over profiteroles), and advice is offered lightly, without sermon. What lingers with Jean-Pierre is not a single flourish, but the accumulation of many small, exact decisions. Service simply makes everything else work, and makes it look easy.

Rising Star: Loïc Portalier, Louise

The caramelised onion tart at Louise has become something of a signature. Comté cheese, vin jaune and brioche feuilletée, a dish that began as a Christmas dinner Loïc Portalier cooked for his family after a decade away from France. It was too good to keep to himself, so now it is on the menu. That same instinct runs through everything he has done since taking over the kitchen. Downstairs at La Terrace, he has expanded the offering into something looser, more casual, but no less considered. A pineapple tomato with yellow peach and shoyu-basil dressing has become the dish we find ourselves describing to friends the next day. Simple. Extremely flavourful and refreshing. He trained in kitchens where technique is religion, but what he has brought to Louise is something else: a willingness to let a dish be simple if simple is what it wants to be. He cooks with the confidence of someone who knows what he likes and trusts that we will too. That is the quiet work of a chef, taking a restaurant that was already very good and making it more interesting, dish by dish.

Best Sommelier: Carlito Chiu, Andō

The best glass of wine you will have this year might be a blushing pink makgeolli. Or an exquisite Chinese yellow wine. Or something from a Japanese cult producer so elusive that only a handful of bottles ever leave the country, and somehow Carlito Chiu has snagged them for Andō. That’s the thing about him. He has the gift of persuasion—not the pushy kind, but the kind that makes you lean in. He speaks about a wine, and suddenly you want to try it. Not because he has sold you on it, but because he has invited you into something he clearly loves. The menu at Andō moves between Spain and Japan with the fluidity that comes from years of partnership with chef-founder Agustin Balbi. But what makes Chiu exceptional is how he bridges that gap for the guest. One conversation, and the cellar opens up. He may have won this award for the third year running, but the real honour is getting to drink what he found. And listen to him talk about it.

Best Pastry Chef: Kylie (Ga-in) Yang, Sol

Barley is not the sort of ingredient that typically makes a diner perk up. Rice, perhaps. Chocolate, certainly. But barley—that humble, nutty grain Koreans have simmered into comfort for centuries—does not usually demand attention. Kylie Ga-in Yang thinks otherwise. At contemporary Korean restaurant Sol, she has built a dessert programme that celebrates ingredients often overlooked, and she does it with remarkable finesse. Her barley cream arrives draped over Guanaja chocolate and tonka cacao ice cream, dusted with burnt grain that smells like a kitchen hearth on a cold morning. The texture is precise, the balance immaculate—the mastery of someone who spent years in exacting kitchens across Seoul and Singapore. What she brings to Hong Kong is the confidence to trust the ingredients she grew up with. Now, she has made the final course feel like the one you were waiting for all along.

Best Innovation: Yong Fu

In a dining landscape where kitchens often guard their secrets like precious heirlooms, Yong Fu has done something rather radical. It has opened its doors—not just to diners, but to dialogue. This is a restaurant built on the precise, unforgiving art of Ningbo cuisine, where raw crab arrives with the confidence of a tradition centuries in the making. Yet rather than resting on its considerable laurels, Yong Fu has become a kind of culinary embassy, hosting collaborations that span modern Korean kitchens, international grill houses and Indian spice routes. Each partnership is not a dilution but a conversation, handled with the same quiet authority that chef Liu Zhen brings to a perfectly executed sesame glutinous rice ball. What emerges is fascinating: a restaurant so secure in its identity that it can welcome the world in, then gently remind everyone what fearless evolution tastes like.

Best New Restaurant: Torikaze

For years, yakitori in Tokyo has been perfected into something approaching meditation. Skewer by skewer, each cut treated with the kind of focus most kitchens reserve for a tasting menu. Yoshiteru Ikegawa built his reputation on that intensity, turning what could be casual into something worth travelling for. Torikaze brought that exacting spirit to Hong Kong. The Kishu binchotan burns close enough to kiss the meat. The smoke carries the primal scent of ubame oak. The char on each piece of chicken arrives as evidence of care. A single bird becomes a landscape explored across an evening: neck yielding differently from oyster, tail from thigh. Yet for all the precision, the feeling is ease. The counter wraps around the fire. The pacing unfolds like a good conversation. They take care of you here in the way people who take their work seriously know how to do. And somewhere between the tsukune and the final rice course, you find yourself wondering why you ever bothered chasing a seat in Tokyo when one finally landed here.

Restaurant of the Year: Wing

The story of Wing begins in a makeshift test kitchen tucked below another restaurant, during a time when the city had stopped moving. Vicky Cheng, restless and curious, started cooking late at night to understand Chinese cuisine the way he felt it deserved to be understood. What emerged from those midnight experiments became something no one expected.

Five years on, Wing has become a restaurant where sea cucumber is transformed into a spring roll so delicate it defies logic, and where fragrant chilli Alaskan king crab is tucked into crispy cheung fun. Cheng hunts out baby mussels from Chiu Chow, tree ginger seeds in Yunnan and hand-picks seasonal fruits for a trolley that has become a ritual unto itself. His kitchen pays homage to the eight great Chinese cuisines, drawing from their deep traditions, their histories, their hard-won techniques, without ever being trapped by them.

The food alone would be enough. But what makes the experience whole is how it all comes together. The warmth of the service, the instinctive hospitality, the sense that you are not just being served but genuinely welcomed. This is a restaurant that makes you feel known, even on your first visit. And in a city with no shortage of exceptional dining rooms, Wing feels like the one we’re all reaching for.

Best Design: Hampton Court

There is a restaurant in Macau that has taken one of England’s great palaces and turned it into an elegant dining room. Hampton Court at Londoner Grand is a space that understands the weight of its references and carries them stylishly. The London-based design studio BradyWilliams has crafted three distinct spaces across the club. Henry’s Kitchen buzzes with open show kitchens. Tudor Lounge settles into a quieter register with its marble fireplace and mohair velvets. Bard’s Bar, named for the court jesters, offers something more intimate, its leather-embossed bar front a nod to the theatrical. The King’s Staircase ties it all together, a garden-themed mural rising through the building. Sumptuous jewel tones, ornate brass work and luxurious fabrics are the ingredients. But what makes the space sing is how they are deployed.

Best Service: 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana Macau

The truffle cart arrives. The shavings fall. The pasta disappears. That is the rhythm of a meal at 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana in Macau—except the truffle is not the point. The person operating the cart is. The structure would seem lavish elsewhere: two servers to a table, each introduced by name, establishing a clarity of care from the outset. Tableside moments unfold with practised ease, including a Sgroppino that is worked vigorously by hand at the table. Amalfi lemon sorbet, limoncello, vodka and prosecco are whisked together with sustained, almost athletic effort, the server intent on achieving that exact silken consistency, before it is poured into glasses held at a precise chill. With just eighty seats, the room holds a rare intimacy in this city. The team moves with instinctive cohesion, anticipating rather than reacting, delivering a kind of care that feels considered at every turn, measured in small, exact gestures that accumulate into something far more compelling than service alone.

Rising Star: Pan Sihui, Aji

The phrase “Asian bistronomy” sounds like marketing copy until you taste what Pan Sihui is doing at Aji. He grew up in Singapore, trained at the Culinary Institute of America, and spent fifteen years moving through kitchens in Beijing, Shanghai and Phnom Penh. That itinerary matters because it gave him something no recipe can: the instinct to know when a dish needs more heat, more acid, or more of the flavours he grew up with. What he cooks now is fusion in the best sense. It is not a collision of cultures, but a conversation between them, and it is fluid, assured and grounded in experience rather than idea. Menus move with the seasons, drawing from both land and sea, always with a sense of balance and progression. There is momentum here. Not in the sense of noise or reinvention, but in the clarity of a chef coming fully into his own, as he refines, sharpens and sets a direction that feels increasingly hard to ignore.

Best Sommelier: Andy Tam, MGM Cotai and MGM Macau

With 18 years in the trade, Andy Tam has developed a style rooted in clarity, range and sound judgement. His early focus on Italian wines gave him a strong sense of structure and balance, which has since broadened into a global perspective. One that comfortably spans classic regions and less familiar territories without feeling scattered. Across MGM Cotai and MGM Macau, his work is defined by how well it integrates. Lists are extensive but purposeful, built to reflect the identity of each restaurant. Pairings are thoughtful and precise, designed to support and sit alongside the food. He brings consistency to scale, maintaining a clear point of view across multiple venues. The result is a beverage programme that feels considered, coherent and reliably well-judged from one table to the next.

Best Pastry Chef: Jonathan A Duran Medina, Alain Ducasse at Morpheus

At Alain Ducasse at Morpheus, Jonathan A Duran Medina works with the kind of clarity that comes from knowing exactly what matters. His path—from Mexico to Monaco, and across Asia—reads in his desserts not as a list of influences, but as a steady refinement of technique and intent. There is precision in everything he does. Textures are exact, sweetness carefully judged, and structure always considered. You see it in the chocolate and coffee served in a cocoa pod, which is meticulously balanced, with roasted buckwheat adding quiet texture and Ethiopian coffee lending depth without weight. French pastry foundations are treated with respect, but never rigidity; they are shaped, gently, by a broader perspective that keeps them feeling alive. What defines his craft is control, leaving an impression that is both immediate and lasting.

Best New Restaurant: House of Origin

A restaurant that seats one table could easily be a novelty. House of Origin proves otherwise. Tucked inside Galaxy Macau, it strips away the stiffness of Cantonese banquets for plush seating, soft lighting and an intimacy that puts you at ease before the first dish arrives. Chef Xu Jingye builds his menu around the season, working with century-old local producers whose ingredients have defined Macau’s culinary heritage for generations. Handmade rice noodles steamed beneath a whole spotted crab absorb the essence of the shellfish. Braised local lobster with salted lemon nods to Lingnan tradition while tasting entirely of this moment. A wok comes to the table, and food is placed onto your plate. There is no distance between the kitchen and the guest. The loudest tables in Macau are elsewhere. The one worth sitting at is here.

Best Innovation and Restaurant of the Year: Chef Tam’s Season

A menu that changes every two weeks sounds like a gimmick. At Chef Tam’s Seasons, it is the foundation of everything. Chef Tam Kwok Fung has built his kitchen around the 24 solar terms of the Chinese calendar, tracking shifts in weather, light and produce with a level of discipline that leaves no room for drift. This is seasonality in its strictest sense. Menus are rewritten constantly, guided by what is available at that exact moment rather than what is convenient or expected.

The sea cucumber stewed with roasted goose jus, lifted by layers of spring onion, delivers depth without excess, each element working in quiet alignment. The crispy beancurd with bird’s nest offers contrast: lighter, more restrained, but handled with the same degree of care and precision. Each dish evolves with the calendar, yet retains a clear identity.

What distinguishes this is not the frequency of change, but the control within it. Every iteration feels deliberate, every menu fully resolved. The result is a restaurant that functions with clarity. It is cohesive, disciplined and entirely sure of itself. It’s no wonder it remains one of Macau’s most compelling restaurants, year after year.

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Learn more about Tatler Best and the Asia-Pacific awards programme