Canton Library opens on the 29th floor of One Peking

Canton Library opened this month on the 29th floor of One Peking in Tsim Sha Tsui, giving Aqua Restaurant Group a second Chinese room in Hong Kong and a harbour window to go with it.

The kitchen is run by executive chef Junno Li, who also sets the food programme at the group's Chinese Library in Tai Kwun. Leung Kwok-wa comes in as executive dim sum chef, a separate title rather than a lunchtime job.

Canton Library reads the Lingnan map

A separate dim sum chef is a statement of intent, not a job title.

The menu is pitched as Lingnan rather than simply Cantonese, which in practice means it draws on Guangdong, Guangxi, Chaoshan, Hong Kong, Macau and Hainan. That is a wider brief than most Chinese rooms in the city take on, and it shows in the running order.

Marinated pigeon with bell peppers and steamed pork belly with black bean and chilli sit alongside chilled sea cucumber in a Chiuchow master stock, the sort of dish that usually stays inside Chaoshan restaurants. Da ma zhan pan-fried buns carry the starch.

Seafood is the axis. The kitchen buys premium coastal fish and builds the expensive end of the list around it, which is the standard route to a high average spend on a Kowloon tower floor.

Tea in the glass, not only the pot

The bar works the same seam. Tea-led cocktails include an Oolong Old Fashioned and an Osmanthus Fizz, an idea Hong Kong's cocktail bars have circled for a decade and that Chinese restaurants have mostly left to them.

Hours are long. Weekdays run noon to 3pm and 5.30pm to 11.30pm; weekends collapse into one stretch from 11.30am to 3.30pm, the yum cha window. The room takes over the floor where Aqua ran its Italian restaurant Vista, according to Foodie's preview of the city's September openings.

The group has spent several years shifting its Hong Kong estate towards Chinese food, and the city's calendar is busy on both sides of the harbour: Il Presidente opened on Duddell Street in Central this month.

The question for a Cantonese room 29 floors up is the oldest one in Hong Kong: whether the cooking or the window is selling the table. The dim sum programme suggests the kitchen intends to answer it.