20-05-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Mainland Chinese tourists miss the point of Hong Kong restaurant's infamously curt service
The influential Chinese social media platform RedNote – also known as Xiaohongshu – can easily make a business and has turned some Hong Kong restaurants into must-see attractions for visitors from mainland China.
But can users of the platform also break a business?
This past month, a minor online tempest brewed when mainland Chinese tourists who dined at Kau Kee, a Hong Kong beef brisket noodle joint on Gough Street in Sheung Wan, complained about the experience they had while patronising the tiny venue.
The negative comments ranged from the noodles and brisket being hard and inedible to dismissive staff who ignored the frustrated guests' complaints.
It seems enough users concurred with the reviews that a local news site reporting on the social media controversy called it a 'firestorm'.
People queue to eat at Kau Kee on Gough Street in Sheung Wan in 2018. Photo: Shutterstock
I'm not on RedNote and I don't read Chinese very well, so I can't say exactly how severe the storm of comments was. But people expressing extreme opinions online is nothing new. For every positive review, there's a contrarian trying to stand out by rage-posting negative and nasty words.
