Hong Kong’s Metropol dim sum restaurant may be dead, but its neon sign will live on
At the direction of the Metropol’s manager, a small team mounted a daring operation to save the restaurant’s iconic neon sign
Hong Kong’s post-pandemic reality has ended many long-established eateries, often with wages left unpaid. But not so for the Metropol, which gave its staff three months’ notice. Its premises, on the fourth floor of the United Centre in Admiralty, had been sold, for HK$354.4 million (US$45.6 million), to the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), which will transform the space into its Business School’s Executive Master of Business Administration campus.
The Metropol was part of Heichinrou, a restaurant group tracing its roots to 1884 in the Chinese diaspora of Yokohama, Japan. Seeing a generation of Hongkongers through good times and bad, the restaurant was famed for its “aunties” who served baskets of steaming dim sum from a parade of carts. Adding their voices to the joyful ambience, they would call out their wares: “Siu mai! Har gow!”
“I have worked here since 2000,” says So Yim-ha. “It’s hard to accept that we must close. I was very happy here and the boss is good.”
With no jobs to keep and no reasons to flatter, the staff of the Metropol remain loyal.