{"id":74357,"date":"2026-08-05T10:04:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T02:04:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=74357"},"modified":"2026-08-05T10:04:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T02:04:01","slug":"are-hong-kongs-restaurants-fighting-a-losing-battle-against-lower-cost-shenzhen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=74357","title":{"rendered":"Are Hong Kong\u2019s restaurants fighting a losing battle against lower-cost Shenzhen?"},"content":{"rendered":"


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In Hong Kong neighbourhoods that once hummed with the sound of clinking glasses and chattering diners, independent kitchens sit closed behind metal grilles and many of the restaurants that remain open rarely fill.<\/p>\n

The silence is all the more striking because just across the border with mainland China, Shenzhen\u2019s shopping centres and food streets heave with Hongkongers queuing for hotpot, milk tea and beauty treatments.<\/p>\n

Even Kosei Kamatani, a prominent Japanese restaurateur who has managed several Hong Kong hotspots over the past two decades, is feeling the pressure.<\/p>\n

Last year, he was forced to close the original Ippei-an Ramen & Bar \u2013 one of the first ramen shops in Hong Kong and his own family\u2019s legacy \u2013 alongside other venues he was running.<\/p>\n

The post-pandemic script, Kamatani says, looked so promising at first. Borders reopened, and the industry braced for \u201crevenge spending\u201d \u2013 the pent-up splurge of millions of stir-crazy consumers.<\/p>\n

What they did not realise was that the money flowed as expected \u2013 just not into local tills.<\/p>\n

The upgraded high-speed rail turned Shenzhen into a weekend default, while the yen\u2019s historic weakness made Tokyo and other Japanese cities absurdly attractive alternatives, where an omakase meal that might easily cost HK$1,000 (US$130) in Hong Kong could be enjoyed for less than half.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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In Hong Kong neighbourhoods that once hummed with the sound of clinking glasses and chattering diners, independent kitchens sit closed behind metal grilles and many…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[3028,3745,3569,5010,3723,27714,3644,11859],"class_list":["post-74357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-battle","tag-fighting","tag-hong","tag-kongs","tag-losing","tag-lowercost","tag-restaurants","tag-shenzhen","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/74358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}