Hong Kong Precints: A curated guide to the city’s best shops, eateries, bars and other hangouts

Money doesn’t burn a hole in your pocket for long in Causeway Bay. This excessively built-up Hong Kong Island suburb is a shopper’s paradise, a neon-lit, pedestrian-clad hub with every inch dedicated if not to materialism then certainly commercialism.

It caters to all budgets and desires with luxury mega malls, such as Hysan Place and Times Square, mid-range department stores (Sogo), street markets, wet markets and hundreds of one-off shops selling clothes, shoes, electronics, computers, skincare products, you name it. At the eastern end, Victoria Park is its green lung – worth strolling through once you’ve maxed-out your MasterCard.

Home owners, DIY decorators and stylists: prepare to feel like kids in a candy store. This edgy shop, which has various incarnations throughout the city (and can be recognised by funky red shipping container facades), is dedicated to furniture, lighting, homewares and accessories, all with left-field design in mind. Furniture items, such as the One Step Up ladder-like bookshelf and Blu Dot Real Good Chair are as much about form as they are function, and can be shipped internationally. The gadgets and gimmickry – rabbit-shaped dish drainers, voodoo-doll knife racks, Skype phones with 1970s retro handles – hail from the quirkiest imaginations and make gratifying gifts.

Shops open Sun–Thurs 10am–10pm, Fri–Sat 10am–11pm; restaurants open Sun–Thurs 11am–11pm, Fri–Sat 11am–12am

Just when you thought Times Square was as much mall as you needed, Hysan Place, a mega shopopolis with 17 floors of shops and 40 eateries, moves in around the corner. This is a one-stop shop for beauty (Mac, Kiehl’s, Aesop), high-end fashion labels (Vivienne Tam, DKNY) and high-street brands (French Connection, GAP). While you’re there, steal a moment to browse Eslite bookstore, which takes up two floors. This Taiwanese ode to the tome has a vast range of books (some in English) and a selection of Asia-sourced gifts and homewares you’re unlikely to come across at home.

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Bowrington Road wet markets, two blocks west from Times Square, bustle with locals buying fresh fruit and vegetables, and seafood that still flaps. The open-fronted food shops are excellent for a local lunch and a beer as you watch the world go by.

Young folk with a distinctive sense of style and an eye for fun fashion are the focus of mega-successful, Hong Kong–wide, concept brand I.T. The Causeway Bay flagship store is a four-storey eye-catcher with awesome window displays and an architectural interior with sleek walls, glass display cases framed by wood-patterned cement panels, and parquet floors. At night, when most Hongkongers shop, it is lit by fancy spotlights and luminous walls. Got your attention? The stores stock a load of cool labels, both expensive and mid-range, including edgy global brands. What it’s most respected for is discovering small names and catapulting them to stardom. Examples include Chocolate, Mini Cream, Beams and Journal Standard.

‘I love ceramics’ – you just don’t hear that enough. This squeakily modern Hong Kong–born boutique is a temple to ceramic tableware your grandma didn’t have. The designers are universal, all artfully chosen for their craftsmanship, creativity, East–West aesthetic and practical edge. Cups, saucers, soy-sauce bowls and soup spoons by Flutter are inspired by classic Chinese hua niao (flower bird) paintings. Auspicious double-coin-symbol retro mugs with wooden lids are the love child of Loveramics’ design team and G.O.D.. Cups by Crackle are a contemporary interpretation of a classic oriental teacup. Rice bowls by A Curious Toile featuring whimsical quintessential English scenery make the perfect cross-cultural gift.

It’s rather bizarre stepping from grotty Lei Shun Court into the hipster interior of Luddite, a mostly men’s boutique created and sourced by a Hong Kong designer with a passion for American vintage. The low-lit homely space decorated with wooden fixtures and retro-phernalia is stocked to the eyeballs with old-school dapper ware such as fedoras, belts, leather loafers with tassels, and bow ties. You can find Steinbeck-era clothing – check shirts, bib tops, bandanas, overalls and waistcoats along with army-cool bomber jackets, boots and leather goods. The owner doubles as in-house tailor creating old-style new clothes and giving stock bespoke touches such as elbow patches.

Hip young things with cash to spare will gravitate to this (relatively) quiet block, where malls give way to street-level shopping. Japanese fashion brands Mercibeaucoup, Tsumori Chisato and Y3 differentiate this fashion hub from others in Hong Kong, as do lesser-franchised names like A.P.C., Gomme and Isabel Marant. High-end names Armani Exchange, Burberry and Max Mara mingle with edgier Zadig & Voltaire, Vivienne Westwood, Guess, Miss Sixty, Killah and Diesel. There’s the brand-heavy, good-looking European fashion house Lusso Brillante too. Cleveland Street is shoe central – check out Camper, Shine, Religion and, for true shoe eccentrics, Brit brand Irregular Choice.

Causeway Bay boasts one of the busiest pedestrian crossings in the world, a thoroughfare of bag-swagged shoppers marching between Sogo department store and Hysan Place. Not far away from the hustle and bustle, 18 Grams is a teeny-weeny corner establishment with just four tables, a tiny kitchen and a big-mumma espresso machine. The baristas here have no problems topping a latte with a fern frond, pet cat or love heart (if you’re lucky). The food is simple, a cross between cha chaan teng (a Chinese rendition of Western food circa 1950s) and European. Hitting the spot on weekends is the big breakfast: snags, baked beans, eggs and a balsamic-dressed side salad.

Ever tried a latte sweetened with organic raw agave nectar and ground black pepper? This is the extreme coffee we’re starting to see in a city traditionally all about tea. The Coffee Academics is well placed to experiment at large with coffee of all descriptions, including drip-ice varieties. The staunchly Hongkonger staff is verging on professional (a rare career path until recently) and dressed like they mean it (aprons, shirts, bow ties). The decor is both sumptuous and smart: lovely wood, metal and raw brickwork blend with dimly lit chandeliers, throw cushions and Tibetan fabrics. There’s a selection of cakes and pastries, or order from a cafe menu with burritos, toasted sandwiches and the like.

This heavenly dumpling joint from Taipei has gone global for a reason. An oversized glass window at the entry of DTF allows guests – local families and expats alike – to keep an eye on the kitchen, where a procession of hatted and scarved kitchen hands slavishly push and prod dumplings, before steaming them for exactly three minutes. They’re on the table in seconds. If this doesn’t whet your appetite, the menu will. Xiao long bao or soup dumplings are something of an art form here, with variations of the original pork version including crabmeat and black truffle. Don’t mind the queues: the huge dining room and swift service mean you won’t wait long. Green tea is poured on arrival, or order a beer.

When typhoons hit Hong Kong in days of yore, fishing boats would ride out the storm in Causeway Bay’s typhoon shelter. While the winds roared and rain poured, the fishermen would cook and feast on spicy crab. The shelters have given way to luxury yachts and party junks, but the crab culture lives on in a motley strip of open-all-hours restaurants on the corner of Lockhart Road and Canal Road West. There are four restaurants – each with varying decor – that lay claim to being the original Under Bridge Spicy Crab. Rest assured that you can’t really go wrong. Whichever one you opt for, the ritual is the same: choose your live critter and wait for it to emerge from the kitchen piled high with fried garlic, shallots and chilli. Plastic gloves are provided.

It’s not uncommon to have watering eyes and a sweaty brow before you’ve even sat down at Yu’s. This street-level hidey-hole has a wood front, but it’s better recognised by the queue of grumbling tummies as keen for a chilli hit as they are for sustenance. Bubbling bowls of chilli-oil-drenched cuisine fill the bustling room with piquant smells. Take a deep breath – and dive in. Favourite dishes include the lovely nutty dan dan noodles (least spicy), mala noodles (very spicy), steamed chilli chicken, vegetable platters loaded with okra, cucumber and black fungi, and Sichuan dumplings. The crowd is mostly local Chinese, plus the odd expat. Tsingtao is available or BYO wine (there’s a small corkage charge). For heat relief you can’t go past a glass of chilled soy milk.

Jennifer Liu was born and raised in Hong Kong until age 12. During that time she fell in love with the style of coffee known as yuanyang, a milky concoction of black tea and Indonesian coffee. She came back to Hong Kong after the 1997 handover to China and in 2003 founded her first coffee establishment near Star Street in Wan Chai. It expanded into Hong Kong’s first coffee academy in 2010, and in 2012 she developed the Coffee Academics.

It’s really happening now, with neighbourhood cafes popping up everywhere. From handcrafted coffees to the latest state-of-the-art espresso machines, everyone is helping to create a unique coffee culture for Hong Kong.

Shopping in antique stores. I’d start at Teresa Coleman and work my way up Hollywood Road popping into Arch Angel Antiques, Art Treasures Gallery and Yue Po Chai Antiques on the way. For eating and coffee I’d head to Café Gray Deluxe. Happy hour would be on Wyndham Street at the little French bar Pastis (see map).

At Compass Room at the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club in Causeway Bay. Dessert was particularly memorable: old-fashioned cherry jubilee (a cherry and liqueur dish) with flambéed crepe suzette.