Into the Blues at BELON

Hong Kong’s Neo-Parisian restaurant BELON has reopened with a sultry, more dramatic look courtesy of award-winning designer Joyce Wang, with the original location’s recognisable touches of blue reimagined in a striking ocean-themed narrative

You won’t need a number or signage — though it’s subtly there — to find the new location for BELON, one of Hong Kong’s most anticipated restaurant (re)openings of the year. Simply alight at the bottom of Elgin Street in SoHo, metres from its previous address, and look for the luminous, inverted scallop facade that covers the building’s upper half.

It’s a statement that the reincarnation of this beloved restaurant will look and feel very different from its predecessor. Under the creative direction of Hong Kong-based interior designer Joyce Wang, the new BELON is more dramatic, darker and sexier, an intimate neo-Parisian hideaway replete with discreet corners, sinuous curves and ambient lighting.

Diners enter via a marble-framed doorway and ascend a flight of stairs to be greeted by a host behind a streamlined Irish pewter counter. A glass-walled kitchen stands to the right, and seductively lit dining rooms, separated by luxurious velvet curtains, unfold to the left. Wang describes the space as ‘a modernist design concept brought to life by a sculptural, serpentine aesthetic… and a serene marbled, metallic palette.’

Through the use of blues and deep indigo, Wang pays tribute to the colours of the original BELON, while transforming the new space into a slightly surreal fine-dining sanctuary that whispers of the sea. ‘The sculptural concave ceiling in high-gloss plaster accentuates the height in the low-ceilinged space we inherited,’ says Wang, adding that the reflection of diners beneath these floating dishes ‘emulates the surface of water, placing the guest underwater.’

Marbled timber salt panels and curvaceous banquettes in shark-grey hues impart a further aquatic spirit, as do floral arrangements that hint at fish scales, corals and sponges, a knowing nod to head chef Matthew Kirkley’s mastery of seafood.

In some way, the interiors conjure the inside of an oyster, or the Nautilus, the retro-futuristic submarine imagined by Jules Verne in his novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Textured wall plaster and gleaming pewter surfaces add an industrial edge, while the soft glow of lights from wall sconces, suspended pendants and from behind screens imbues BELON with a cinematic quality, part of the ‘theatrical experience and delicious sense of voyeurism’ Wang wants diners to encounter.

The main attraction, of course, is Kirkley’s food. Having won three Michelin stars at two of the restaurants he headed up in the US before moving to Hong Kong, expectations are high for what he can deliver on the plate. And if first impressions are any indication, those will be met. Not only is the food excellent, but it’s as artful as the Bruno Moinard paintings that grace the walls of the restaurant itself.

Text / Kee Foong
Images / Edmon Leong