The two-storey restaurant in Central district has multiple top listings in global travel guides and serves customers from 6:00am to 10:00pm, seven days a week.
Hong Kong’s Lin Heung Tea House, one of the city’s most famous dim sum restaurants, faces an uncertain future as its lease is due to expire early next year.
The two-storey restaurant in Central district has multiple top listings in global travel guides and serves customers from 6:00am to 10:00pm, seven days a week.
But the restaurant says the building's new owner has yet to make contact about renewing its lease, which is due to expire next March, according to restaurant spokesman Terence Lam. The building's landlord, CSI Properties, told AFP it could not comment on the case.
This has sparked fears that Lin Heung will be the latest Hong Kong culinary treasure to fall foul of the city's thirst for redevelopment.
The city’s housing market topped the list as the world’s most expensive in 2017, according to figures from US-based Demographia, with developers clamouring for prime real estate.
The sale of older buildings and spiralling rents have forced a number of family-run neighbourhood favourites across Hong Kong to close.
Lin Heung is one of the city's oldest Cantonese restaurant businesses and is run by the Ngan family, who set it up in 1926 after arriving from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.
Lin Heung now has three outlets in Hong Kong. The Central venue on Wellington Street is its main restaurant and has been in the same spot for 22 years.