Vietnamese crab exporterdouble-skinned crabs
Advertisement
PostMag
Life.Culture.Discovery.
Editor's Letter
PostMagCulture

This week in PostMag: Macau’s revitalised Kam Pek Market and a farewell to Metropol Restaurant

Cuban artist Alejandro Piñeiro Bello shows at Pace Gallery and Hong Kong bids a bittersweet goodbye to Metropol Restaurant

2-MIN READ2-MIN
Listen
It’s the end of an era for Metropol Restaurant in Hong Kong, which closed after 35 years. Photo: Jocelyn Tam
Cat Nelson

It’s a twisted truth that it’s always when a venue’s closing that everyone suddenly remembers how much they loved it. On September 27, the Metropol Restaurant shut its doors after 35 years, and the public reaction has been, unsurprisingly, intense. Our cover feature this issue joins the crowd.

Over several visits in its final weeks, photographer Jocelyn Tam captured the Admiralty restaurant’s slow wind-down. Her images convey, as associate editor Gavin Yeung writes in his intro, “a relic of Hong Kong’s boom years of the 1980s and 90s”. Gold and deep-red tones set the stage for steamer baskets stacked high atop some of the city’s last dim sum carts. But it’s the portraits that land hardest: staff who’ve worked at the Metropol for decades, there right up until the end. When Jocelyn asked what they planned to do next, the answer was, “Rest”. Good on them.
Hong Kong feels like it’s speeding up as we race towards the end of the year. The art world, at least, is in full swing, with gallery openings, new shows and plenty to see. Aaina Bhargava meets Cuban artist Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, whose solo show at Pace Gallery in Central ties together Caribbean history and folklore into a dreamlike aesthetic. He’s in Hong Kong for the first time, jet-lagged, wandering the streets through the night, finding it all a bit surreal in the best way. His canvases are dense and charged, full of night skies, crimson seascapes and ghostly figures. I’ve not yet made it to see the work, but it’s on my list now.
Select Voice
Select Speed
1x
AI-generated voice