A Mong Kok cha chaan teng whose classic ’60s-style interior served as the backdrop to many Hong Kong TV shows and films will close its doors for good at the end of this year.
The China Cafe on Canton Road first opened in 1964 as a family-run operation, and its old-school mosaic tiled floors and walls, ceiling fans, and formica tabletops — seemingly frozen in time for decades — ultimately made it much in demand as an on-screen representation of the iconic Hong Kong-style diner.
The restaurant was the backdrop for crucial scenes in at least three crime thrillers and action films by the famed Johnnie To: PTU, Election, and Fulltime Killer. It also appeared in the romance film Endless Love, the action comedy Once Upon a Time in Triad Society, and a drama about sex workers called Whispers and Moans.
However, it’s likely best known to foreign audiences after featuring in the Hong Kong episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, in which Bourdain sampled some of the restaurant’s most famous dishes: fried pork cutlet rice with tomato sauce, macaroni with spam and egg in soup, Hong Kong-style French toast, and pineapple bun with butter.
But after 55 years, Apple Daily reports, the China Cafe will officially shut its doors for good on Dec. 31.
The current owner of the restaurant, surnamed Tam, said there wasn’t any particular reason for the closure, only saying that it was “time to shut up shop.”
One of the restaurant’s regulars, a 65-year-old man surnamed Wong, told Apple Daily that he grew up in Mong Kok and although he moved to Sheung Shui a few years ago, would still visit the China Cafe a few days a week, saying that he really liked the old-style tiling characteristic of the 50s and 60s, and that the restaurants egg tarts, milk tea, and red bean ice were some of the best things to eat and drink.
He remarked that “a lot of famous people still come here, like Helena Law Lan,” who featured in a Hungry Ghost Festival-themed PSA by the Fire Services Department, and also starring creepy blue gimp-suited mascot “Anyone” teaching people how to perform CPR.
Wong also recalled that police officers in the old days after arresting people would grab food at the restaurant and that at night film crews would go to the restaurant to film commercials.
