Kerry Hotel Hong Kong
Hunkered down on the magnificent leafy terrace of the Kerry Hotel’s Red Sugar bar gazing across Hong Kong Harbour to the city skyline at night would have to be one of the coolest urban views on the planet. With a negroni in hand and fairly chill beats emanating from a speaker hidden in the greenery it is a wonderful way to finish a long Hong Kong day.
Located on the harbour’s edge, the Kerry Hotel is a spacious oasis sitting cheek-by-jowl to Kowloon’s frenetic, packed Hung Hom district. With its mix of tiny shopfronts, local restaurants next to global franchises and shopping centres filled with a rabbit warren of shops catering to one particular good such as Fashion World as well as residential tower blocks, Hung Hom is pure Hong Kong. Not quite the Bladerunner vibes of Mongkok but an amazing locale where the drive in feels like you’re entering a forest of concrete.
Stand in the men’s toilet at Red Sugar and you’re gazing straight into 100s of apartments and voyeuristically watching 1000s of people settle down for the evening at dinner, to argue, debate or study or sit in front of the TV. It’s a bit like one big multi-storey door has been opened on every building to reveal everything within – a Hong Kong version of the French novelist George Perec’s Life a User’s Manual which tells the stories of the residents in a Parisien apartment block.
Back at the Kerry Hotel all is good. Red Sugar provides a wonderful view and the adjacent Hung Ton restaurant had turned out the best two-course Peking duck I’d ever eaten. Washed down with a nice Chianti, it was an ideal meal after a flight from Singapore earlier in the day.
Yet while everything sounds rather hunky dory at the Kerry, it does have a few problems. On a previous pre-Covid stay, Lunch Magazine had been impressed by the rooms and décor but unfortunately, not much has happened since. The Premier Sea View room I stayed in was an impressive 52 sqm in size with a huge marble bathroom but the furniture and fixtures are looking tired.
Moreover, the room smelt of numerous others as the carpets, curtains and soft furnishings have over the years slowly soaked in the fug of 1000s of overnight travellers making the room their short-term home.
On the upside, the king-bed was super comfortable, the view fantastic and the front desk always alert to the occasional laundry, food or technology enquiry.
Overall, though, the service was rather hit or miss. The Red Sugar bar and Hung Tong restaurant were pretty much uniformly good while the Lobby Lounge and Dockyard were mediocre at best. Granted the Dockyard seemed to be going through some form of renovation or refresh but it wasn’t great.
And while the Kerry Hotel is a fair way from the city centre, it’s a great base because of the room it affords in a city which embraces confined spaces.
One final bugbear is the ferry situated right in front of the hotel doesn’t ever seem to leave so you’re left staring at the excitement of one of the world’s most vibrant cities sitting tantalisingly close just across Victoria Harbour but actually so far way (or at least a 30-minute cab ride).
