Mandarin Hong Kong hotel restaurants in the 1970s?

Submitted by maureenfan on Thu, 07/03/2014 - 10:32

A letter from June 1977 describes the Mandarin Hotel Marqee (sic) restaurant. Does the writer mean the Marquee Coffee Shop? Assuming it's been updated since then, do any Gwulo members have photos from that time, or a description of the interior or famous menu items? Is that coffee shop now today's cake shop? Was the hotel then simply called The Mandarin, or The Mandarin Hong Kong (and not the Mandarin Oriental until the 1980s)? Many thanks. 

Submitted by on
Thu, 07/03/2014 - 22:34

From no later than the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, the coffee shop was located on the ground floor facing Chater Road (southwest corner of the building).  I don't remember that the coffee shop has a name though.

Well, Maureen,  although it's now 'The Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong ', to anyone who has known it since opening in 1963, it was and will always be  known simply as 'The Mandarin'.

Wiki tells us that it was renamed in 1985 on the formation of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group - presumably to identfy it from its other Mandarin hotels.

Sorry I can't help with naming the coffee shop - my favourite hangout being The Chinnery for the finest, most relaxed lunchtime carvery in HK -  albeit men only until about 1991.

So ... yam sing ... Harry.

.Mandarin Hotel - The Chinnery: A recent picture of The Chinnery, Mandarin Hotel.

The original coffee shop was small and located on the ground Level where the east side entrance is today. Entrace was from Connaught Road. At the same time Mandarin operated a coffee shop called Marquee in the shopping arcade of Prince's Building's first floor, by the side of the sky bridge linking to the Mandarin Hotel. Marquee later re-located to the Ground floor of the hotel ( Chater Rd side ) and was simply called Coffee Shop, staffed by the same people from Marquee. The was during the first half of 1982 or later part of 1981.