Hong Kong, High & Low

HONG KONG IS CELEBRATED as a city of luxury and labels, with sky-high buildings and prices to match. But we can’t all be jet-setters (or sometime travel writers) cocooned in five-star style. Chased by dour economic news at home, I tackle a trip there with a two-fold purpose: to experience quintessential Hong Kong high life on the glorious half shell, but then to counter it with a taste of the new, hip—and, mercifully, more affordable—city that has lately emerged in the enclaves and side streets outside Hong Kong’s more obvious tourist and expat haunts.
As my high-style home base, I choose the most authentically Asian of luxe accommodations, the Shangri-La. Though the brand also has a hotel on the Kowloon side, I choose the classically opulent Island Shangri-La in Hong Kong’s Central district. From the red-coated greeter who leads me to a sleek black sedan at the airport to the fresh fruit bowl and crystal chandelier in my harbour-view 55th-floor room, it’s flawless elegance. Well, there is one tiny flaw: the staff gets my name wrong, likely the fault of my own messy handwriting at registration, and people call me “Miss Rooker” during my entire stay. But they use it with such frequency and affection I can’t possibly complain—
especially since the gold script “CR” monogram on my customized white-terry bathrobe is still correct.
I flew to Hong Kong on an overnight Cathay Pacific flight in my own cozy business-class sleeper pod (around $5,000 round-trip from Vancouver), so my air-travel complaints are nil. Nonetheless, a jet-lag-relieving acupressure massage ($112) is an offer I can’t refuse.
I take a breather in the Shangri-La spa’s steam room before therapist Patty uses thumb pushing, stroking and prodding to loosen the horseshoes of tension forged in my shoulder blades. After that, I dip in the outdoor hot tub before dinner.
The Shangri-La is justifiably famous for its cloud-scraping formal French restaurant Petrus, where the already-precious Wagyu beef comes topped with thick slices of truffle crowned by a slab of foie gras ($81). Tonight, at its Cantonese boîte the Summer Palace, dinner is a dozen dishes served family style at a round table (from $55 per person). My advice: don’t start with the Peking duck or drunken prawns (so-called because they soak in Chinese rice wine for a sweet, slightly tart taste). Only because after eating half a dozen giant shrimp or a few fluffy rice pancakes filled with garnet house-made hoisin, julienned green onion and crispy-skinned duck slices, it’s hard to consider eating anything else.
To cap the night in high style, I join friends at Sevva, the Central district hotspot of the moment, where the Veuve flows freely and our 25th-floor outdoor terrace table has a front-row view of the nightly laser light show that plays out on the faces of nearby skyscrapers.
The next day, Hong Kong’s renowned luxury shopping is on my list. I walk past glittering Bulgari and Tiffany storefronts in the Pacific Place mall adjacent to the hotel as I make my way to the impossibly clean, efficient and cheap subway. (Most rides, even to far-flung Kowloon stops, cost less than a Canadian bus.) I emerge near Queen’s Road’s golden mile of international brands like Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Valextra. My destination is Shanghai Tang, a temple of chic chinoiserie where I finger a delicate eggplant-coloured velvet jacket with a silk lining and traditional frog closures (around $900). Cashmeres of indescribable lightness, fragrances with exotic notes of mandarin and pepper—and prices that shock. This place reminds me that I’m only pretending to lead this lush life.
My final stop on this tour is tea at the Peninsula, a landmark of old-school luxury if there ever was one. At 5 p.m. the lobby is like Grand Central Station, with sharp-suited businessmen darting to avoid wide-eyed tourists and one regal matron gliding to the elevators chased by a white-uniformed, pillbox-hatted Peninsula porter laden with Prada and Gucci bags—her shopping sherpa. The people-watching alone is worth the cost of tea for two ($50), though the clotted cream with scones and silver tea service are nice perks, too.
Now it’s time for the Cinderella-
after-the-ball moment. Travelling on my own dime, I’ve been drawn to the hotel JIA (studios from $130/night), a tower of high-modern flats by design guru Philippe Starck in the dense, vibrant Causeway Bay neighbourhood. Furnishings are minimalist and the bathroom is Lilliputian. When I get hungry for the daily pastry and chocolate treats from my Shangri-La suite, I get the JIA staff to coordinate delivery of a take-out carton from a nearby noodle house ($7).
JIA puts me within striking distance of a well-stocked location of my favourite Hong Kong shop, Goods of Desire. Japan has Muji, Sweden has IKEA and Hong Kong has GOD, where I stock my shopping basket with inexpensive and stylish linen placemats ($20 for four), retro-chic tea towels ($5) and a tablecloth discreetly patterned with double happiness symbols ($40).
You can find another branch on Hollywood Road in the trendy Soho district, not far from hilly lanes like Gough Street, where modern design stores are springing up among dingy laundries and shoe-repair stalls. I’m fixated by green boutique Ecols, a museum-quality selection of bowls made from recycled plastic, vases fashioned from used film stock and chainmail-style handbags made in Brazil from pop-can tabs, all tagged with a rating for materials, manufacturing, creativity and style. At a Causeway Bay boutique called Addiction, I’m taken with the architecturally inspired Wear and Tear jewellery by Hong Kong Polytechnic graduate Cheung Lik, especially the clever combination of ribbon and chain that makes up the Weaving Tape necklace ($90).
Slightly footsore, I head for Let’Spa, a dark and quiet underground sanctuary in the Wan Chai neighbourhood, named among the best new spas in the city last year by Time Out Hong Kong. I get an Ancient Oriental Footsie treatment ($35), a hip reinvention of that Hong Kong staple, a streetside foot massage. Here, the reflexology is preceded by a soak in the city’s only ozone-rich footbath, a Lucite cube that has color-changing chromotherapy lights to boot. I feel like I’m back in my own first-class airplane seat, reclining in this giant white lounger, watching a private TV while listening to Take Five on headphones, sipping tea and snacking on sweets while the kinks get worked out of my soles. Later I giggle when I see the Toto Japanese-style (heated seat, blow-dry) commode in the ladies’ room—the modern parallel to the old-world bidet that had been in my Shangri-La room.
The favourite stop on my alternative Hong Kong tour is lunch at the restaurant Bo Innovation in Wan Chai. A mosaic tile portrait of its young “demon chef” Alvin Leung (who grew up in Canada) faces the quiet courtyard terrace, two floors up from a busy street. A sliding glass door flies open; the interior is cool and austere. At my place setting are odd accoutrements, like industrial-looking tweezers and a slate and stainless steel raised hotplate. A server ceremoniously unfurls an aggressively starched napkin, beginning a procession of nine mini-courses that are marvels of molecular gastronomy, or what the chef calls “extreme Chinese cuisine.” The odd stone trivet becomes a lab bench for dishes like an amuse bouche of red-sprinkled crystal jelly (tomato with dried raspberry powder), rice that has been desiccated into little crispies and a dessert beaker of mysterious black liquid that turns out to be a sparkling black sesame foam that disappears on the palate. Cleverest of all is a brown-sugar-smoked quail egg topped with black caviar, nestled in crispy taro shreds: egg heaped with eggs in a little nest. For just over $100, the tasting menu is a priceless culinary memory.
Then it’s across the harbour again, a case of déjà vu as I hop off the subway and retrace my steps past the Peninsula for a less-high afternoon tea. The Mira, a sleek shiny renovation of the Miramar hotel on Nathan Road, is as quiet as outer space, its lobby a sea of wavy-sculpted white walls and chandeliers wrapped in shiny black cylinders. At Yamm restaurant’s daily afternoon tea you can choose from a dessert buffet of designer cakes and ice creams or a variety of set menus, ranging from traditional English or Japanese style to a cute American tray, which includes a mini grilled cheese sandwich, cheeseburger, hot dog and fries ($25)—no cheaper, but much hipper, than the traditional tea down the road.
It’s at my last stop that I take a breather to calculate the price tags on my high and low adventures in Hong Kong. At Lova, a fourth-floor lounge nearly hidden in the sea of pubs in the raucous Lan Kwai Fong nightlife district, I sip a glass of Prosecco ($10) and add up the pros and cons of my haute and hipster tours of duty. Conclusion: Hong Kong still hits all the high notes, even on a lower budget. wl