Ho Lee Fook is like a Shaw Brothers film set, transporting one back to the glamour and elegance of smoky post-war Hong Kong.

One expects to spy Chan Po Chu making a dramatic, fashionably late entrance sashaying down the red-carpeted stairs, her glossy-haired lover moodily nursing a smoke and a baijiu in the corner while shady gangsters, hunched surreptitiously at the glowing onyx cocktail bar, side-eye everyone coming into the joint.

‘Black Sheep’s brief for the project was quite open, but it was clear that we all wanted to keep the playfulness of Ho Lee Fook’s original design,’ says Sean Dix, who designed the original restaurant in 2014. ‘We updated and elevated the design to reflect the new, more authentic and refined cooking of chef ArChan Chan.’

Guests are greeted by a massive sculpture of a fortune cookie and a wall of cheeky maneki-neko, the golden Japanese beckoning cats that set the stage for the restaurant’s playfulness. A glittering brass staircase with plush crimson carpeting descends to the cinematic basement dining room, encircled by plush, blood red velvet wrap-around booths. There, the seductively warm, soft-edged lighting creates a romantic ambience in and conjures an experience out of time, “where quotidian Hong Kong is left behind,’ says Dix.

Rare Twilight Green marble from northern China and bespoke contemporary hardwood furniture subtly recall traditional Chinese lines and themes, while other elements were purposefully amplified, like the bespoke vintage-inspired wallpaper that wraps the room like one of Lin Dai’s skin-tight qipaos.

‘One big challenge was to create a sense of height where there wasn’t any,’ says Dix. ‘To achieve that, we installed a mirrored ceiling with custom designed, handmade opaline glass luminaires that are cut in half then reflect in the ceiling. This creates the effect of both a higher ceiling, and the appearance of floating lanterns above the tables.’

Most materials, including the iconic handmade mahjong for the façade and the beautifully handcrafted fortune cookie sculpture, were sourced and produced locally or within the Greater Bay Area to reduce carbon footprint.