The Sydney cafe where memories of old Hong Kong live on through milk tea, loud Cantopop, and ‘a bit of education’ about Cantonese food
- Hong Kong Bing Sutt was born in 2016 after Jessica Chan and Kevin Cheung moved to Sydney and began to miss Hong Kong food. Later they opened a second branch
- The menu, featuring dishes such as cart noodles and claypot rice, offers some customers a taste of home, and others a better understanding of Hong Kong culture
On a cold winter morning soon after opening, Sydney restaurant Hong Kong Bing Sutt is already filling up as I step inside to meet the owners, husband and wife team Jessica Chan Tin-wai and Kevin Cheung Chun-kwok.
Cheung had always dreamed of becoming a chef; he spent his childhood and adolescence helping out at his family’s restaurants in Hong Kong. His parents ran a restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui and his grandmother owned a canteen in North Point.
His parents, however, urged him not to become a chef, so he studied architecture and IT instead, and eventually worked in the banking industry.
Chan and Cheung, who’ve known each other since primary school, have lived in Sydney twice – first when Chan’s family immigrated here in 1994 and Cheung followed to study in the city, and then when they moved back in 2015 after a decade in Hong Kong.
“We really liked the idea of having our own food business, one that could show Hong Kong’s food, style and culture but with our own character,” Cheung says.
