July 22nd, 2010
Street Seafood
Get yourself some cheap beer, a plastic stool, a big round table and a bunch of friends — and you’ve got yourself the makings of a Hong Kong seafood dinner. Bowrington Road is one of the more expensive spots for al fresco seafood dining, but its location, next to a busy street market and just down the road from Hong Kong’s most popular shopping district, is unique.
Tags: Hong Kong, Street Food, Streetlife
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Des says:
But where do people park? In seriousness, are there permitting and other regulatory steps that restaurants like these have to go through to use street space like this? I think that a lot of cities could learn from HK on some of these areas; it seems as though they combine some fairly ‘western’ health/safety approaches (inspections, etc…) with more ‘chinese’ approaches to informal use of space.
July 22nd, 2010 at 2:36 pm
Christopher DeWolf says:
To be honest, I’m not sure.
Hong Kong began to aggressively regulate its streetlife in the 1970s by requiring outdoor restaurants, street hawkers, markets, etc. to have a permit. This allowed the government to contain street activity with the ultimate goal of eliminating it by restricting the transfer of licences and so forth. In recent years, the cultural and economic importance of street markets, outdoor dining, etc. has been increasingly recognized, but the system is still designed to contain street activity rather than facilitate it. You can’t start a new street market, for instance, and if a street market disappears, it cannot be replaced.
That said, there are many grey areas in the law and these are exploited by plenty of businesses. Putting tables in the street might fall into one of these grey areas.
July 23rd, 2010 at 5:20 am