25+ Restaurants: Popular in Hong Kong, the Zen restaurant brand was founded to offer quality Chinese food to diners in London
The brand got its start serving high-end Chinese food to Londoners
Known to many Hong Kong families as a weekend dim sum spot, Zen closed its doors in Pacific Place in 2013. But that was only one chapter in the story of this Chinese restaurant empire. A new concept, Zen Too, opened earlier this year in Causeway Bay, and there are still many Zen restaurants operating around the world.
Zen was founded by Hong Kong entrepreneur Lawrence Leung in London in 1983. It wasn't his first restaurant. Leung, who studied to be a chartered accountant in London in the 1960s, says: "Food in Chinatown wasn't a good representation of Chinese cuisine.
"There was high-end Italian and French food, so I thought, 'why not Chinese?' That was what sparked the idea for the first restaurant, Yung Nga."
When that closed, Leung says his friends suggested they open a cinema to show Hong Kong films.
Soon he was entertaining actors passing through London on their way to film festivals, and having his own restaurant to host them made sense. So Leung opened another high-end restaurant, I-Ching, specialising in small plates. In 1983, wanting to offer more shared dishes, he opened the first Zen.