On The Menu | 5 food and drink experiences in Hong Kong to look forward to in December 2023, from Clockenflap festival to a giant gingerbread house
- December is one of my favourite times of year to be in Hong Kong, when the air is crisp and dry, and the streets less crowded
- This year, it feels especially important to stick around and support Hong Kong’s bars and restaurants. Here are five opportunities to do just that
Christmas and New Year ’s Eve have traditionally been some of the most lucrative periods for the dining industry – festive menus abound, there are parties to attend and booze to be drunk in copious amounts before the sobriety mandate that comes with the new year.
However, in last year’s festive season, Hong Kong bars and restaurants reported fewer customers and lower spending.
Most put it down to the freshly opened borders and scrapping of quarantine following as the Covid-19 pandemic threat ebbed, which fuelled a mass exodus from the city. Yet it does not seem the fervour among Hong Kong residents for short- and long-haul trips has lessened over the past 12 months.
The most common question you’ll hear being thrown around at this time of the year is likely to be “so are you going anywhere this Christmas?”, and my answer, like most years, is “nowhere”.
I love staying in the city over the festive period, not only to enjoy the precious days of cooler, drier weather but the relative calm that seems to settle over Hong Kong at this time – the perfect balm before the madness of the Lunar New Year, the bigger holiday on the calendar.
