Hong Kong: Where to Eat: Big Night Out: China Club

China Club

This is a favorite of Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella, who captured its appeal in a nutshell. “However familiar it is to Hong Kong residents, visitors are thrilled by its collection of Chinese art, its nostalgia, its glimpse of another age,” he says. “With Shanghai Tang and the China Club, David Tang has done a remarkable job in offering the West a vision of China that perhaps doesn’t exist and never has existed but that we all wish did exist.” The club is housed in an old bank building, right in the middle of Central, and has an awesome collection of Chinese memorabilia, including paintings, furniture, bric-a-brac and posters from Chairman Mao’s disastrous Cultural Revolution. The food is excellent, but it is for the overall experience that most people go; arrive early and sip a cocktail at the long bar, decked out as a Shanghai club might have looked in the roaring ’20s. Try to snag a private booth. Officially it is a members-only club, but any capable concierge can arrange reservations.