Luisa Tam

My Hong Kong | Old Hong Kong bakeries are dying, go while you still can – buy an egg tart or pineapple bun before they all disappear

Happy Cake Shop in Hong Kong’s Wan Chai district is closing after 45 years in business – it’s the latest ‘mom and pop’ shop in the city to shut

The city will soon run out of independent shops, small eateries and bakeries that offer affordable, local-style food products that are uniquely Hong Kong

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Customers queue up at Happy Cake Shop in Wan Chai after the popular bakery announced it would close on August 3. Bakeries like this are getting thin on the ground in Hong Kong. Photo: Dickson Lee

Luisa Tam

Published: 9:45am, 30 Jul 2022

Another piece of Hong Kong’s identity is disappearing.

The city’s rapid urban development and unaffordable rents, combined with the severe economic downtown caused by the coronavirus pandemic, means that Happy Cake Shop, in Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island, will close its doors for good on August 2.

The neighbourhood bakery is meeting the same fate as the much-loved Mido Café in Mong Kok, which closed just over a week ago. Mido’s claim to fame was that it was the city’s oldest traditional cha chaan teng tea restaurant – or so it said – having kept customers fed and watered for 72 years.

Like Mido, Happy Cake Shop is an institution. For 45 years, it witnessed the city morph around it and, until now, had remained unchanged and unmovable.

Happy Cake Shop in Wan Chai closes on August 2. Photo: Dickson Lee

Many tenement buildings and shops in the vicinity of Happy Cake Shop have not been so lucky and were demolished or bought out to make way for swanky high-rises and chain stores. A neighbourhood that was once brimming with character and colour has now become another sanitised and characterless commercial district.