Where to eat in Hong Kong: chinese restaurants that kick things up with kung fu and Shanghai vibes

Dining out is not only about eating good food. There is an emerging trend of Chinese restaurants creating memorable experiences by using their spaces to transport diners into another world, whether it is back to a 1960s shop house or a Grand Café in 1920s Shanghai, or even 1970s kung fu movie sets. These are some of the experiences now available to diners in Hong Kong.

Kenneth Ng, general manager of Dining Workshop, the group that opened Dragon Noodles Academy in Central two years ago, says that going out to just eat noodles is boring and so he created a 1970s kung fu movie ambience in his restaurant. “When I was young, I was naughty, so my parents made me join the army. I was 19 years old at the time. I learned kung fu and loved it. I learned many kinds of martial arts, so when I started in restaurants, I thought, if we only provide food it will be very boring. So I mixed martial arts culture with food.

“When diners come here, I can show them the basics of the Chinese martial arts culture, like the [kung fu] wooden sticks at the front and the lion heads on the wall,” says Ng.

And eating at Dragon Noodles Academy is entertaining, with not only the many lion heads on the wall but also a five-metre custom-made dragon at the entrance, which took 45 days and six people to craft. “It weighs 1,000 pounds,” says the 35-year old restaurateur. The bar recalls a traditional Chinese medicine shop with craft beer served out of handcrafted copper wulu. The interaction of food and theme takes place with noodle-making performances and the mixologists in Chinese vests paired with jeans serving old-meets-new cocktails with names such as Dragon Palm Strike and Chang-er’s Collins.