Where To Eat & Where To Party Like A Billionaire When In Hong Kong

The culinary infrastructure of ultra-wealthy Hong Kong is, by any objective measure, absurd — absurd in the best possible sense, meaning disproportionate to what any city of this size has any right to possess. Michelin stars accumulate here the way Rolexes accumulate in the safe rooms of the Peak: in quantities that would seem implausible elsewhere and are simply Tuesday in Hong Kong.

Let us begin with the hardest reservation in the city.

Where To Eat

The Chairman, Kau U Fong

If there is one restaurant in Hong Kong that the ultra-wealthy genuinely compete to book — rather than simply expecting to be accommodated upon request — it is The Chairman. One Michelin star, a resolutely seasonal Cantonese menu, and a reservation list that operates entirely on its own terms, without deference to reputation, relationship, or the size of one’s portfolio. The steamed flower crab in aged Shaoxing wine is a dish people return to Hong Kong specifically to eat. The room is neither large nor lavish. The cooking is, by any reckoning, among the finest expressions of Cantonese cuisine in the world. Plan months ahead. Accept that the restaurant does not make exceptions. Respect it for this.

Amber, The Landmark Mandarin Oriental

Chef Richard Ekkebus’s flagship was promoted to three Michelin stars in 2025, an honour the Dutch-born chef’s dairy-free, sustainability-driven tasting menus had been quietly earning for years. The aka uni with cauliflower and Royal Cristal caviar is quietly one of the great dishes of the modern era. The kitchen tour, available to those who remember to request it, reveals a brigade operating with the precision of a financial institution and the creativity of an art studio. Book months in advance. Book the kitchen tour at the same time.

8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana, Central

Umberto Bombana — known with good reason as the King of White Truffles — has held three Michelin stars in Hong Kong since 2012, making this the most enduring benchmark of Italian fine dining in the region. The white truffle season draws the faithful from across Asia; the wine cellar is exceptional; the pasta is the best in the city without qualification. This is the restaurant that serious Italian food people from Rome and Milan visit when they come to Hong Kong and then return home slightly unsettled.

Caprice, Four Seasons Hotel

Three Michelin stars, unimpeded harbour views, and a cheese cellar that would embarrass most Parisian fromageries. Guillaume Galliot’s tasting menus are among the city’s greatest pleasures, and the setting — all pale stone and glass, the harbour glittering beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows — is as beautiful as any dining room in Hong Kong. The wine list runs to thousands of labels. The service is flawless without being theatrical. The adjacent Caprice Bar is one of the city’s great aperitif venues, and the correct prelude to whatever follows.

Gaddi’s, The Peninsula

One of the oldest fine-dining rooms in Hong Kong — opened in 1953 — Gaddi’s earns its single Michelin star through consistency, classicism, and an atmosphere of unhurried grandeur that newer restaurants can rarely replicate. The trolley service for soufflés is a performance worth experiencing; the wine programme is the first thing

to enquire about upon arrival. There is a kind of restaurant that does not chase relevance because it has never needed to. Gaddi’s is that restaurant.

Where to Drink

Now, the bars — and here a note on what this guide does not recommend. The popular establishments that have dominated Hong Kong’s cocktail coverage in recent years — Bar Leone, Coa, The Chinaman, The Green Door, The Quinary — are, many of them, genuinely excellent. They are also, almost universally, walk-in only, long-queued, without private rooms, and without VIP seating. Those with deep pockets and an interest in discretion do not, as a rule, queue. The following addresses operate on different principles.

The Captain’s Bar, Mandarin Oriental

A Hong Kong institution since 1963 and, remarkably, still one of the best bars in Asia. Dark wood, leather banquettes, an impeccable martini, and a clientele that has been coming since their fathers did. The Captain’s Bar is the kind of room where serious people have serious drinks without feeling the need to perform either the seriousness or the drinking. Some things should never change. This is one of them.

Qura Bar, Regent Hong Kong

Named among Tatler Hong Kong’s Best 20 Bars, Qura faces the harbour with maximum drama and trades in rare spirits and vintage-led cocktails with a seriousness of purpose matched by very few rooms in the city. The vintage spirits programme in particular represents a depth of commitment that distinguishes it from bars that merely have a long list.

Terrace Boulud, Landmark Hong Kong

The latest rooftop arrival has quickly become one of the most reliably interesting drinking venues in Central — partly for its panoramic views, partly for who tends to occupy the lunch and early evening tables. CEOs, tech tycoons, and the incumbents of generational wealth take their seats over dim sum and then some. It is, in the most useful sense of the phrase, a room where things happen.

The Clubs After Dark

For those who prefer their evenings more structured, the clubs deserve their own taxonomy. Carlyle & Co at the Rosewood remains the gathering place of choice for the creative and globally mobile. The library, the music room, the speakeasy, and the private outdoor terrace above the harbour make it the most seductive private space in Kowloon after dark. The China Club’s bar — lacquered walls, contemporary Chinese art, the ghost of Sir David Tang presiding approvingly — is where old Hong Kong goes to remember itself. The Hong Kong Club, simply, is where power is quiet.

The Races: Where It All Comes Together

A final note, because no guide to how Hong Kong’s ultra-wealthy spend their evenings is complete without it. The races at Happy Valley on Wednesday nights are not merely sport; they are theatre, social calendar, and deal-making forum compressed into a single, floodlit arena. The private suites and corporate boxes of the Members’ Stand — dedicated wine lists, table service, panoramic views of the track — are where you will find, on any given racing evening, a significant proportion of the Forbes list making conversation that, in the polite fiction of the stands, has nothing to do with business at all. At the Sha Tin International Races in December, horses and owners arrive from Japan, Europe, and the Middle East for what constitutes, for a certain class of Hong Kong society, the event of the year.

According to Forbes, there are 71 billionaires in Hong Kong, and 539 in mainland China. You'll find a vast number of them at the The Hong Kong Golf Club or the races, at any given time in private rooms and boxes that are far from the madding crowd. While Western media has been on the hunt for the first living trillionaire on the planet, according to unconfirmed yet reliable sources, there are perhaps three in China. They just have the dollars and sense to be quiet about it.