Kennedy Town's dining map has a genuinely new idea on it. CHIU San opened on 19 August 2026 at Kin Liong Mansion on North Street, pairing the umami-heavy techniques of Chiu Chow cooking with the discipline of a Japanese teishoku set — a combination nobody else in Hong Kong is doing.
In This Guide
What is CHIU San?
CHIU San is Hong Kong's first restaurant built entirely around Chiu Chow–Japanese fusion, opened on 19 August 2026 by the third-generation heirs of a longstanding Chiu Chow restaurant family. Rather than running a conventional Chiu Chow menu, the team has reinterpreted their culinary heritage through the format of a Japanese teishoku set meal — a fixed tray of a main dish, soup, rice, pickles and dessert.
The shopfront itself signals the crossover: a large-scale graffiti mural covers the exterior, and the restaurant sells its own lifestyle merchandise — T-shirts, canvas totes, caps and enamel pins — positioning itself as much as a youth-culture brand as a place to eat.
What's on the menu?
CHIU San runs four daily limited-edition teishoku sets, each built around a protein and finished with miso soup, salad, three types of pickles, CHIU San's own tamagoyaki, steamed rice and a Japanese wagashi dessert. The Salt-Grilled Yellow Croaker with Homemade Miso Sauce (HK$138) roasts deboned croaker over an open flame on a fragrant hoba leaf, finished with a Puning bean paste and citrus ponzu sauce. The Stone-Grilled Beef Short Rib with Chiu Chow Satay Sauce (HK$158) uses USDA Prime beef served sizzling on a Japanese stone plate with a house blend of Chiu Chow sa cha and teriyaki sauces.
Other sets include a Grilled Spanish Pork Belly with Chiu Chow White Vinegar, and a theatrical Soy-Glazed Fish Sauce Chicken Thigh with Kuro-mayu — marinated over 12 hours in preserved rice brine, pepper and fish sauce, then finished tableside beneath a smoking dome. Small plates reinvent Chiu Chow classics: the pomegranate-shaped chicken dumpling (HK$28) flash-fries a labour-intensive egg-white-wrapped dumpling instead of steaming it, and the matcha crystal sweet dumpling (HK$18) fills a translucent Chiu Chow crystal-dumpling wrapper with Japanese matcha.
Why does Chiu Chow x Japanese make sense?
The pairing is less odd than it sounds. Both cuisines lean hard on fresh seafood, restrained seasoning and umami-forward sauces — Chiu Chow satay and preserved bean pastes sit surprisingly close to Japanese teriyaki and ponzu in flavour logic. CHIU San's approach also taps into a wider Hong Kong dining trend of the past year: young chefs from established Cantonese and Chiu Chow kitchens reformatting family recipes into tighter, single-format menus, similar in spirit to the cha chaan teng revival happening elsewhere in the city. For context on the wider cuisine, the Michelin Guide's Chiu Chow restaurant list shows how established the genre already is in Hong Kong — CHIU San is simply the first to run it through a Japanese format.
Kennedy Town has spent the past few years building a reputation as a laid-back, design-forward dining pocket removed from Central's crowds — see also nearby Gettin for coffee, and the area's bar scene in Sai Ying Pun and Kennedy Town. CHIU San's opening, and the ongoing interest reflected in Foodie's September round-up of new Hong Kong restaurants, both point to the district continuing to pull in ambitious new concepts.
Address, hours and how to get there
CHIU San
Kennedy Town Station's Exit B feeds directly onto North Street, so this is one of the more MTR-convenient new openings in the district — no bus or tram connection needed.
Good to know: the four teishoku sets are limited-edition and rotate, so the exact line-up on the day may differ from the signatures listed here — check CHIU San's Instagram (@chiusanhk) for the current sets before heading over, especially at dinner when kitchens sometimes sell out of the more elaborate options first.
Frequently Asked Questions
A genuinely new idea in a neighbourhood full of good ones
CHIU San brings a properly original concept and a very photogenic teishoku tray to Kennedy Town. Book via WhatsApp, and check Instagram first to see which of the four sets is running that day.