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TOPIC

Diner's Diary

Diner's Diary
Bernice Chan's Diner's Diary lets you know the latest news in Hong Kong's fast-paced restaurant scene, from the latest promotions to new eateries you need to try.
highlights from
100 Top Tables 2025 Restaurant Directory
100 Top Tables 2025 Restaurant Directory
Sustainability is no longer just a buzzword. Here’s how Hong Kong’s fine dining is improving its green policies: from Amber at The Landmark Mandarin Oriental and Michelin-starred Mono to Vicky Lau’s Mora, Roganic and the Marriott group. Photo: Ting Lung Heen

How Hong Kong’s fine dining scene is getting greener – at last

The staff of Socio at the the 100 Top Tables Tables 2025 Unveiling Ceremony and Awards. Photo: Jordan Chan

Celebrating 100 Top Tables’ top restaurants and bars in Hong Kong and Macau

Bar Leone co-founder Lorenzo Antinori. Photo: Jocelyn Tam

Why neighbourhood bars in Hong Kong are gaining popularity

More from 100 top tables
Content from SCMP's Specialist Publications
Japanese izakaya starters. Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto
Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong swaps Pierre for Aubrey, an izakaya

An izakaya – in Japan a small, informal place serving alcoholic drinks and snacks – may appear an odd choice for a venerable five-star hotel in Hong Kong’s Central business district. All will be revealed in due course

Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | First Zika, then coronavirus: disease dictates chef’s moves

Coronavirus pandemic

Why Hong Kong fine-dining restaurants must adapt to survive

Coronavirus pandemic

Diner’s Diary | Got Valentine’s Day plans? Top hotel restaurants forced to shut

Restaurants in some top Hong Kong hotels have temporarily shut their doors ahead of February 14 because the coronavirus outbreak has caused a slump in business.

Various Hong Kong restaurants in the city’s top hotels, such as Gaddi’s at The Peninsula Hong Kong, are closing before Valentine’s Day this year because the coronavirus outbreak has caused a slump in business.
Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | Chef Uwe Opocensky puts his stamp on Petrus at the Shangri-La

Appetisers that are theatrical and almost too pretty to eat, nose-to-tail cooking – German chef Uwe Opocensky has brought his signature style to the fine-dining restaurant at Admiralty hotel.

Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | Everything’s avocado at Avobar – dishes, drinks, and dessert

From a burger where avocado halves replace the bun, to delicious avocado toast, to avocado smashed with chilli, we sample the menu at new restaurant in K11 Musea mall.

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Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | ‘My dream got bigger’: why chef shut restaurant for hotel job

Uwe Opocensky, who shut his self-named restaurant to return to hotel trade, says he had ‘an amazing offer’ and was given the chance to ‘grow further’. He drops hint about new role, saying second generation hotel owners see need for change.

Uwe Opocensky is turning his back on burger-flipping. Photo: Beef & Liberty
Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | Carving tofu into a flower is as hard as it looks. Trust us

Chefs are well known for their knife skills, but the Chinese dish chrysanthemum ‘thousand cut’ silken tofu takes them to another level. A Chinese master chef makes the dish in 90 seconds, so how do we shape up? It isn’t pretty.

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Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | KFC unveils chicken mooncakes at new Hong Kong outlet

Just in time for Mid-Autumn Festival on September 13, KFC has launched a “spicy chicken and nuts mooncake” at its new Causeway Bay branch.

Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | Shake Shack x The Chairman burger taste test: it lacks bite

Limited edition burger features five spice and Sichuan pepper, meant to deliver a hint of the tingling on your tongue that condiment brings. But the effect is too subtle in our opinion. Judge for yourselves – if you can get one on Saturday.

The Chairman Shack and The Chairman Shake, on sale for one day only in Hong Kong on Saturday. We got a taste of the limited edition burger, and the shake, and found the Chinese flavours too subtle for our palate. Photo: Jonathan Wong
Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | Good news, egg tart fans: Lord Stow’s are back in Hong Kong

Hongkongers disappointed at having nowhere to buy Lord Stow’s famed egg tarts since March can now happily head to the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong. Get there early though – they are normally sold out by midafternoon.

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Lord Stow’s egg tarts at the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong in Central. Photo: Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong
Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | Shake Shack, No 1 Hong Kong restaurant collaborate on burger

The Chairman, new entry on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, and fast-food chain will offer ‘Cantonese inspired’ limited edition burger and shake in July, and promise ‘a match made in gourmet heaven’. We can’t wait.

Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | We take a food safari to the market with a top Hong Kong chef

Chinese executive chef of the Kowloon Shangri-La hotel, Daniel Cheung, visits Tai Po market to chat to stallholders and get inspiration. He takes us to his favourite stalls and then back to his kitchen, where he cooks his purchases.

Veganism and vegetarianism

Diner’s Diary | The meat-free Impossible Burger 2.0 has arrived. We give it a taste

The new version is said to be juicier and more beef-tasting than the original, uses soybeans instead of wheat to allay gluten concerns, and contains 30 per cent less sodium and 40 per cent less saturated fat than before.

The Impossible Burger 2.0 contains 30 per cent less sodium and 40 per cent less saturated fat than the first version. Photo: Impossible Foods
Hong Kong Fine Dining

Diner’s Diary | Julien Royer, of Asia’s No 1 restaurant Odette, to open in Hong Kong

Frenchman whose Singapore restaurant Odette is No 1 on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list and has two Michelin stars will open Louise, designed by Andre Fu, in space at PMQ occupied by Jason Atherton’s Aberdeen Street Social.

Top French chef in Singapore, Julien Royer, to open Hong Kong restaurant; Andre Fu to design it

Pineapple on pizza? The world’s best pizzaiolo approves

For Italians, the thought of putting pineapple on their pizza is sacrilege. That’s what Franco Pepe, known as the world’s best pizza maker, thought, too – at first. He is bringing his take on pineapple pizza to Hong Kong and Geneva.

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Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | What I will and won't miss when Hong Kong's oldest tea house shuts

Dim sum spot Lin Heung Tea House, known for its chaotic atmosphere and brusque servers, closes its doors this month. Customers have to wash their own utensils, but it serves old-school dishes not found elsewhere.

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Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | Instagram-worthy Hong Kong dessert shop hidden in West Kowloon

Hong Kong chef Margaret Xu Yuan prides herself on making beautifully handcrafted Chinese treats with a modern twist for her shop, Go Cakes. The only challenge is that her shop is located in the Xiqu Centre in the West Kowloon arts hub.

Instagram-worthy Chinese dessert shop in Hong Kong tucked away near Chinese opera theatre
Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | ‘It became a drinks place’: Stone Nullah Tavern boss on its closure

Fini’s, ‘a brand that everyone loves’ according to owner Todd Darling, will replace Stone Nullah Tavern in Wan Chai; ‘We need to be maximising resources,’ he says of the switch.

Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | HK$1,888 for pasta is pricey, even if it is topped with gold flakes

An Italian restaurant in Wan Chai has taken its truffle season promotion to new heights with golden tagliolini - pasta with white truffles topped with gold flakes. Yes, really

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Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | Two Michelin stars is too much too soon for Alain Ducasse

I had an uneven meal at the French super chef’s restaurant in Macau’s Morpheus Hotel, while others who ate at its Chinese restaurant Yi raved about every dish. To give one of them two stars and the other none smacks of injustice.

Is Alain Ducasse’s new Macau restaurant worth two Michelin stars but apparently fabulous Yi none?

Diner’s Diary | Food for thought as couple call time on New Zealand restaurant

After three years serving New Zealand cuisine at prices that made margins razor-thin, owners need a break and time to digest lessons they’ve learned – but first there’ll be a final street party, and a farewell haka, on December 9.

Motu Kiwi head chef Vini Nath and his partner, Jo Ching. Photo: Jarrod Watt
Food and Drinks

Diner’s Diary | New look, and menu, coming for Amber – and its culinary director

Contemporary French restaurant the hottest ticket in Hong Kong as it serves 14-course menu to celebrate its 14 years in Central; for US$880, diners on last day before it shuts for revamp will be first to taste it future eight-course menu.

Diner’s Diary | If you need an excuse to eat pasta, here’s one: it will help city’s poor

To mark World Pasta Day and raise money for Foodlink Foundation, which distributes unwanted food to Hong Kong’s poor, 22 restaurants will donate to the charity up to 20 per cent of what you pay for a special dish.

Diner’s Diary | Man Wah restaurant’s new executive chef gets creative

The fine-dining restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental hotel has a new chef and he is coming up with some new dishes. Stand-outs included the sea urchin pudding and the signature pastry puffs.

Man Wah’s braised chicken and abalone in casserole with sun-dried shrimp and chilli. Photo: courtesy Mandarin Oriental

Diner’s Diary | ‘Chinese burger’ fans in luck as Little Bao opens new bigger branch

Hong Kong chef May Chow, who won a best Asia female chef award last year, has added several tasty new items to the Causeway Bay branch’s menu including fried chicken, shrimp tacos and seaweed poppers.

Chow, who won a best Asia female chef award last year, has added several tasty new items to the Causeway Bay branch’s menu including fried chicken, shrimp tacos and seaweed poppers

Diner’s Diary | Michelin Guide’s new international director led global expansion

Gwendal Poullennec, who succeeds Michael Ellis, joined Michelin in 2003 and has spent the past 12 years overseeing the dining bible’s global growth.

Macau

Diner’s Diary | Macau’s Don Alfonso 1890 is no longer. Here’s what it morphed into

On his first visit to Macau since sweeping changing were made to his 11-year-old fine-dining Italian restaurant, chef Alfonso Iaccarino is pleased with the new Casa Don Alfonso – and has big plans in store for next year.

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