The grandest dame | Why I love the time warp of The Peninsula Hong Kong and probably always will

I hadn’t been to Hong Kong in over 15 years. Last time I was there, I stayed for a week at The Peninsula. Then, unexpectedly, a bit longer. I got to the airport just as a surprise typhoon shut things down and was driven back through the Blade Runner glow of the city, rain lashing against the windows, to the Kowloon side of the harbour, home. Because it did feel like home. Returning after so long, at the start of 2025, felt the same.

Hong Kong does hotels very well indeed. When I was talking with Thomas Heatherwick recently about his plans to turn the BT Tower in London into a hotel (no, I don’t think it will happen either), he told me he had learned everything there was to know about designing five star properties from various stays in Hong Kong. “They aren’t just places to sleep,” he explained. “In Hong Kong they are part of city life.” And he’s right.

This was most apparent when I was having an early supper in Chesa at The Peninsula, a kind of Umberto Eco affair… a Swiss themed restaurant, complete with classic chalet décor, a soundtrack to drive you a bit bonkers, fondue, and all the trimmings. There are, I discovered, more Swiss restaurants in Hong Kong than London. Odd, you think, until you do a little digging on Google and discover the historically tight ties between Switzerland and China. And also—even if you don’t like chunks of bread dipped in melted cheese, the ritual is fun. So, Chesa is now a massively popular date, birthday, and business meeting restaurant.

The most special thing about the hotel in Hong Kong is, for me anyway, the time warp of Felix, the restaurant that Philippe Starck designed in 1994

The rest of The Peninsula is more straightforward, but perfectly so, with details that make you thrilled to be there: The little leather cable ties they tidy your laptop with on the desk in your room, and the little sachets of lens and screen wipes they leave alongside it.  The monogrammed Teddy Bears on the bed, dressed as Peninsula front-of-house pages. The Peninsula-branded soap in a red lacquered ornate Chinese box in your bathroom. The surprising, exhilarating blast of water from multiple horizontal-angled shower heads when you turn on the taps. Then there are the details that land so beautifully before you arrive, and after you leave: The drive in the customised Rolls-Royce EWB Phantom to the city. The personalised Bentley Bentayga (launched at the hotel in late 2024) that takes you back to the airport, and the member of staff that wheels your luggage to check-in and stays with you until you get to the fast-track security line. Life in The Peninsula bubble is extraordinary. And you never want it to end.

There are far more contemporary hotels in Hong Kong these days. But that’s the beauty of The Peninsula. The lighting is warm, not ice-cold LED. The lobby is an old-fashioned marble fantasia of columns and gargoyles and afternoon tea. You don’t walk through the halls, your sweep through them. They have their own brand of champagne (and in Hong Kong they have their own chardonnay too), which it never feels too early to order. Breakfast in The Verandah is a greedy buffet affair, with dim sum as well as eggs galore, and little pats of butter on silver, shaped like The Peninsula page hats. The lunch menu at Spring Moon features some of the best dim sum in the world,  but it’s the tea smoked chicken that lingers in the memory—perfect slices of poultry, with a crisp dark glaze, and a taste like nothing on earth.

The bedrooms at The Peninsula are flawless, the pool deck is perfectly arranged (you swim indoors, but there are steps down to a sun terrace where you can shift into beach club mode on a lounger), and the service is all as you’d want it to be.

The most special thing about the hotel in Hong Kong is, for me anyway, the time warp of Felix, the restaurant that Philippe Starck designed in 1994. You reach Felix via its own lift, in one of the shopping arcade hallways attached to the lobby. When you step into the space, you’re transported into the era of Luc Besson, Portishead, the ‘Rachel’ haircut, RuPaul as the face of MAC, and Elizabeth Hurley’s Versace safety pin dress. This is imperial era Starck, with all the curves and conical shapes, black and white photo prints and ice blue lighting that he rose to fame on.

As Starck later said of the place: “It was in creating the Felix restaurant that I was able to check what I later applied in my hotels: the most important is not the beauty of a place, it is that the place can transport people elsewhere, out of themselves especially, transport them to the best.” And he really did it. Which is amazing. What’s more amazing is that The Peninsula stood its ground and let the space go wildly out of fashion and come back around again. Now they have 1990s themed cocktails, and it’s a place of pilgrimage for design obsessives. We lost so many of those great, original, Ian Schrager-funded hotel interiors, and Starck was being erased for most of the 2010s, so Felix is a treasure. The food is also way better than it needs to be.

Predictably, The Peninsula has passed into cinematic as well as architectural lore. It features in The Family Stone, as the place where Sarah Jessica Parker’s character meets her lover (yes, okay, a bad film… but an essential guilty Christmas pleasure). It also appears in The Man with the Golden Gun, and its twin helipads on the roof—reached by the real-life China Clipper lounge, which is where pre-flight safety briefings take place, and cocktails are served for private hire parties—feature in The Dark Knight. All big screen thrills. But The Peninsula will always be a star to me and will always take the lead role in Hong Kong. C

The Peninsula, Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong
Peninsula.com