Most reopenings sell the dining room first: more covers, a prettier staircase, a photograph that flatters the chandelier.
Vicky Lau did the opposite. At Tate, now on the ground floor of Evora at 68 Lok Ku Road in Sheung Wan, the useful news is the floor plan. The two-storey house runs about 5,500 square feet for roughly twenty guests. Press coverage puts more than sixty percent of that footprint behind the pass: kitchen, wine cellar, office, laundry, and rooms where the team can eat and rest. French-Chinese craft, in this telling, needed space to work more than it needed another row of banquettes.
Wallpaper* dated the opening to 4 August 2026. Local notes have also spoken of mid-August booking windows. Treat the calendar as fluid in the first weeks and confirm on tate.com.hk before you diary a night. Read What a Decade of Michelin Singapore Actually Measures if you want the guide’s scoreboard logic; this is the Hong Kong craft argument beside it.
“The next iteration of TATE Dining Room will reflect my vision of French Chinese fine dining, my love for Hong Kong, and a deep respect for craftsmanship in a world racing ahead.”
Vicky Lau, announcing the Hollywood Road farewell, April 2026
Arrival Is the First Course
Chris Shao, whose studio works between New York, Shanghai, and Dubai, designed interiors that read as a private house rather than a stage set. The façade is metal printed to resemble marble. Guests press a brass ring rather than triggering an automatic door, then pass through a ceramic arch into reception. Inside, the palette runs taupe, mushroom, ivory, pewter, and sage across eggshell lacquer, plaster, handmade ceramics, and French textiles embroidered in China. Chairs hide a small drawer that slides out as a phone shelf. Sconces glow through their stems.
That level of decisive detailing is not decoration for its own sake. Shao told Wallpaper* that Lau knew immediately what she loved. The room is the graphic designer’s eye still running the project: composition first, then appetite.
Hollywood Road’s earlier chapter, designed with James JJ Acuna, was already intimate at about 2,200 square feet. Elgin Street in 2012 was smaller still. Lok Ku Road is the first version where the back of house is allowed to win the square-metre contest.
What the Kitchen Is Built to Protect
Lau’s cooking has long been sold as edible stories: French classical craft carrying Chinese memory, each plate an “ode” to an ingredient. The MICHELIN Guide Hong Kong and Macau 2026 still lists Tate at two stars, a ranking held since 2021, when she became the first female chef-proprietor in Asia to reach that level. She was Asia’s Best Female Chef in 2015. Relais & Châteaux membership dates to 2018.
The new line includes a Korean charcoal grill beside a serious gas wok, a bread proofer, a deck oven, and guéridon finish at the table. Press materials describe more than twenty ceramicists contributing vessels, some using Lau Fau Shan clay and cuttlefish bone so Hong Kong’s geography sits in the hand. A cellar cited around 1,200 French bottles is paired with Chinese tea served with ceremony. Soften fragile “quiet luxury” language; the durable claim is that tea and ceramics sit beside wine and sauce work as equals.
The private room for about ten is the house’s smallest public statement. The kitchen is the largest.
How to Use Sheung Wan Around It
Book through the restaurant’s system once dates open; older FAQs still describe sixty-day windows and a cancellation fee near HK$500 per guest within forty-eight hours, but confirm everything against the Lok Ku address. Closest MTR remains Sheung Wan or Sai Ying Pun. Sister rooms fill the gap while calendars settle: Mora on Upper Lascar Row for soy-led French-Chinese lunch, and Jija at the Kimpton in Tsim Sha Tsui when you want Southwest China chatter instead of an ode tasting.
For Cantonese contrast the same week, The Chairman on Wellington Street and Lung King Heen at the Four Seasons still measure different Hong Kongs. Tate’s claim is narrower and, for once, architectural: French-Chinese craft finally has a floor plan that treats the pass as the main room.
