After three weeks in mainland China, Hong Kong felt almost like home, and its London-born hotel only made the feeling stronger. Writer and photographer Priscilla Adegoke checks into The Hari Hong Kong on Wan Chai’s Lockhart Road, where the art gets as much attention as what’s on the plate.
A More Familiar Hong Kong Than I’d Planned For
After three weeks of VPN workarounds on the mainland, I’d braced for more of the same in Hong Kong. It changed my mind within an hour.
I got by in English everywhere I went. Apple Pay and Uber both work. The plug sockets are Type G, identical to the ones back home in London. And then there’s Marks & Spencer, sitting there on a Wan Chai street corner in all her glory. I won’t pretend I didn’t shed a tear as the saxophones of homesickness started getting louder.
The Hari carries that same dual citizenship by design. It opened in Hong Kong in December 2020, four years after Dr. Aron Harilela’s first Hari in London, which turned ten this summer. Staying in Wan Chai felt like watching a London habit relocate.
A Lobby in Golden Brown
Check-in happens at a low, discreet desk on the first floor, off to one side. The real welcome is the lounge behind it, all golden browns and velvets you want to run a hand over on your way past. It feels like a well-furnished study. The Hari‘s own language calls this “the neighbourhood’s living room,” and for once the phrase holds up.
The one thing I’d question is space. The lobby felt snug and the gym was already on the small side. Nothing we used ever tipped into crowded, but I can’t tell whether that was good flow management or good luck, and I’d be curious how both cope when the hotel is full.
A Corner Room with a Beach Ball
Upstairs, guestroom doors are finished in a deep opal blue leather. Behind ours, the Corner Room came in at 323 square feet, enough that my sister and I could each have our own corner of it. Above the headboard hung a round, porthole-shaped piece, a textured blue surface with a single beach ball caught mid-scene, playful against the room’s muted palette. The window seat looked straight down onto Wan Chai, close enough to people-watch. The layout does a lot with the space, too. The bathroom sits just to the right as you walk in, set flush to the side and out of the way, which leaves the rest of the room clear.
By the time we made it upstairs after Tipple Hour, a Hari Rose Martini and a handwritten note were waiting. The martini sat in its own chilled container, and the ice was still in perfect condition.
Sugus, who led our tour of the hotel, also showed us the Library Suite, more than double the size, with its own bar and a terrace over the city and harbour. It can connect to the suite next door if you’re travelling as a group.
Two Rounds at Tipple Hour
We went to Tipple Hour before we’d even seen our room, and I didn’t expect much from it. I was wrong. It’s Zoku’s afternoon offer, running daily from 3pm to 6pm, and I’d put it near the top of the list for anyone staying here.
Every dish has a lightness to it. The plates are small, so you order several, and sharing is clearly the point. It’s communal eating with a refined edge. Between us we had tuna and salmon tartare, a salmon croquette, the karaage and a yasai makimono roll. The karaage went so fast we’d reordered before finishing the first round, and the Hari 75, made with the hotel’s own gin and topped with Perrier-Jouët, went the same way. It was the drink of the evening, with a glass of Malbec Casarena Reserve from Mendoza and a Spritz Rosé alongside. Be warned. If you aren’t careful, the drinks will tipple you.
Inside The Hari Art Prize
Sugus took extra care over the art when she showed us round, and it deserves it. The collection is curated by A Space For Art, the London art advisory, and its centrepiece is The Hari Art Prize, now in its third year and drawing a record of nearly 700 applicants.
This year’s winner, Man Mei To, took the HK$100,000 prize for Curly Breathing I, a sculpture in padauk wood and steel, from a panel that included senior figures from Chanel, White Cube and TASCHEN.
Runners-up Katrina Leigh Mendoza Raimann and Ailsa Wong were recognised for Small Stepping and Lightning respectively, and Katrina’s hand-worked textile was one of the pieces we stopped in front of.
My favourite of the finalists’ work, though, was Brendan Fitzpatrick’s In Silver, a portrait lit almost like a Rembrandt. The way it’s hung, warm light catches her face and folded hands and leaves everything else in shadow.
The finalists’ work hung throughout the hotel until the end of October, and the walls change with each year’s prize, so what you see will depend on when you go.
Sugus took particular care over the art on our tour, and we ended up deep in conversation about The Hari Chronicles, the talks the hotel hosts every so often, where artists come in to share their work. I’m reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way at the moment, and it’s made me appreciate places that give artists room to create and a crowd to talk to. The Hari’s lounge is the perfect backdrop for it.
Breakfast at Lucciola, then a walk that turned into a day
Breakfast at Lucciola runs on a buffet-plus-one-main format, and I chose the smoked Scottish salmon with caper berries, cream cheese, and red onion two mornings running. It held up on the repeat, which matters more than it sounds. A hotel breakfast that’s good once is easy. Good twice, consistently, is a service standard.
From there, I walked east towards Causeway Bay. Light showers came through in bursts, enough to break a heatwave not unlike the one I’d left behind on the mainland, and the tram bells, the ticking pedestrian crossings and the beep of cards at every till meant the street never quite went quiet.
I’m a creature of habit with coffee, and trying somewhere new usually takes more nerve than it should. But Hong Kong felt familiar enough that I dared, so the first stop was Project C on Hysan Avenue. I went in for the look of the place and one sip of an oat mocha had me fully alert. It was shy on sugar, though, and with no sachets out for customers, I was at the mercy of the waitress. I could feel her quietly questioning my health choices.
Next was Hetras, a Korean fragrance brand new to the city, with friendlier prices than somewhere like To Summer. It specialises in room sprays and incense, and a few of the scents I’d had my eye on had already sold out, which forced a restraint I hadn’t planned on. The Hotel Wood room spray made up for it. Spray it and for a second you wonder whether anything’s happened, then the room fills with deep wood and musk, with flashes of lily of the valley cutting through. I bought several as gifts. It’s the same scent Deborah opens her Villa Fosca Tulum review with.
Then I hopped on a tram heading nowhere in particular. It’s a bit jolty, with the character of something that’s been running for over a century and the efficiency of a system that still works, and I grinned like a giddy child the whole way. If you’ve read about my steam train day with my dad, you’ll know transport does that to me.
We ended the day watching the sunset from Top Town’s rooftop before coming back to The Hari for dinner at Zoku, our last night of three weeks across China and Hong Kong. I went back to the yasai makimono roll I’d had at Tipple Hour, then moved on to Kyushu chicken wings and thighs, and then more of both. The skin was properly crisp, but the meat was so light to the bite that another plate never felt like too much.
A slow last morning
Lunch was at Elephant Grounds nearby. An oat hot chocolate and a breakfast burrito so good that I ordered a second to take to the airport.
An evening flight meant I could linger in the lobby that afternoon, reading and letting the trip settle, with no need to dart around for last‑minute shopping. Staff sorted a late checkout without fuss, and when the time came, my luggage went straight into storage.
I’d come to Hong Kong expecting one more round of figuring things out. Instead I found M&S on the corner and a hotel whose older sister sits a train ride from my own front door. That’s the case for The Hari Hong Kong: nearly 6,000 miles from London, and it still knew how to make me feel at home.
Booking info: Rooms at The Hari Hong Kong start from around £150 a night, depending on season and room type. Book here, or reserve Tipple Hour and a table at Zoku on +852 2129 0388.
Photography by Priscilla Adegoke, shot on the Fujifilm X-H2 with the XF56mm F1.2 and XF30mm F2.8 Macro lenses, courtesy of @fujifilmuk.
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