FOOD REVIEWS: Inside Asia’s Iconic Cantonese Restaurant, The Chairman Hong Kong
A brief trip recently to my old home, Hong Kong, brought back many memories of long into the afternoon lunches with business colleagues, and experiencing some of the best Cantonese food you can find anywhere in the world. Generally speaking, most Chinese food is good; but I find Cantonese food above and beyond.
On this occasion, I was alone; most of my old friends from back in the day have long departed from the territory. The hustle and bustle, and groups of business expats on huge expense packages, are all a thing of the past. But Hong Kong still retains a special charm of east meets west and will always have a special place in my heart - my years there taught me so much about life.
As it was a turning-the-clock-back day, I booked The Chairman restaurant the same way everyone does. I logged in on the morning the tables are released and secured one before the month disappeared. Two days later, I was on the third floor in 198 Wellington Street, in a room that hardly looks like the home of one of the most talked-about Cantonese restaurants in Asia.
There’s no theatre at the door. Instead, you’ll find plants, low lamps, cookbooks and a scatter of art across about sixty seats. Service is smart and attentive without the stiffness of a typical hotel dining room. Owner Danny Yip said the move here in September 2022 was meant to feel more like dining at home, and the room comes close. It helps to remember that this is a home with a much larger kitchen than dining room, which is exactly the trade he made when he left his original address. Personally, I preferred the old venue, but Danny has done a great job here.
That first address explains much of the restaurant's character. Yip opened on 31 August 2009 in a quiet cul-de-sac in Central, Kau U Fong (two doors along from my office), after years working in restaurants in Australia and building and selling a technology company in Hong Kong. The restaurant stayed there for thirteen years. Its last service was on 7 September 2022, and it reopened at The Wellington on the 30th, a short walk from Sheung Wan station. Head chef Kwok Keung Tung has long been the other half of the kitchen, and the two are known for testing a recipe for months before it reaches the table. Nothing on the plate is there to be photographed, just savoured.
The cooking is the argument
The Chairman loudly admits that it uses no MSG and no chicken powder. Chickens and pigs come from the New Territories, fish from local boats, and vegetables are chosen in season. Yip's thinking has always been, in spirit if not in these exact words, that there is no reason to fly food in when the boats and farms are already on the doorstep. It sounds like a manifesto, but at the table it simply tastes like attention.
Menus are chosen in advance. Lunch is the gentler introduction, while dinner is the meal people cross the city for.
If it is available, which fortunately it was on the day I arrived, the dish to order is the one that has carried the restaurant since the old room: fresh flower crab, steamed with aged Huadiao wine and fragrant chicken oil, served over Chen Cun flat rice noodles. The Michelin Guide's description holds up. The noodles are silky, the wine is fragrant rather than hot, and the crab tastes of the sea rather than of stock. Other kitchens have copied this dish, and it is still better here, because the secret was never a trick. It was the crab. And today’s was a delight and worth my coming back for.
Around that centerpiece, the menu shifts with the season and the day. If it is being served, ask about the camphor-wood-smoked black-foot goose, the other signature worth seeking out. Yip said it took nine months to get right. The steamed grouper head with fermented chilli is darker and hotter, the kind of Cantonese cooking that makes no apologies. Beef short ribs with Chinese liver sausage, finished as clay-pot rice, is the comfort course, built from rich fat, crisp rice crust and cured liver with no decoration. The greens with XO sauce do exactly what they should, which is sing. I would not skip a vegetable here. In this kitchen they are never filler.
Nothing is tweezered into a neat line. The pleasure comes from texture, fat, wine and smoke, in roughly that order. Service is well judged. Staff let the table admire the crab before portioning it, so the course does not turn into a demolition. Corkage is charged if you bring your own wine, though, of course, tea is the more natural match for this food.
What it costs: The cost is around HK1,400 per head. For a one-Michelin-star restaurant that has twice been named the best in Asia, this is neither a bargain nor a rip-off. You are paying for the crab, the sourcing, and the atmosphere of a room full of people who already know what to order.
The accolades, and why they matter for the booking
Rankings are not the meal, but they explain why the tables vanish. In 2021, The Chairman became the first Chinese restaurant to top Asia's 50 Best, and it entered the World's 50 Best top ten the same year. Yip received the Icon Award in 2024. On 25 March 2026, at the Kerry Hotel, the restaurant took the No. 1 spot in Asia again, with Wing, in the same building, placing second. It holds one Michelin star in the 2026 Hong Kong and Macau guide and has held it across recent editions. It has also appeared in the South China Morning Post's 100 Top Tables every year since 2013. The list that matters most, though, is the one on the restaurant's own website: tables are released on a set day and are gone within seconds.
I left full, and slightly annoyed that the crab course had to end. That is the review. The Chairman is not the grandest Cantonese room in Hong Kong, and it is not trying to be. It is the restaurant that turned local produce and a plain crab into a destination, then refused to turn that destination into a show. Book it the moment the window opens. Order the crab. Eat the noodles with the sauce.
The Chairman is on the third floor of The Wellington, 198 Wellington Street, Hong Kong. The telephone number is 2555 2202. It is open from noon to 3:00 p.m. and from 6:00 p.m to 11:00 pm.
Discovering Hospitality Ratings
Ambiance: 7/10
Service: 7/10
Presentation: 7/10
Food: 9/10
Value for Money: 8/10
Overall rating: 7/10
