It’s not that Leung has been stagnating; over the past decade we’ve witnessed a constant churn of invention and reinvention. He’s opened a slew of restaurants: Toronto’s R&D in 2015; Hong Kong’s Bib N Hops in 2016, then Plato 86 and Forbidden Duck within three months of each other in 2017; and a second location of Forbidden Duck in Singapore the following year. More recently, in March this year, Leung expanded his burgeoning restaurant empire to the Middle East with the opening of Demon Duck in Caesar’s Palace Dubai. Plus, there’s been his role as a judge on MasterChef Canada since 2014, cultivating a “tough love” persona that has resonated with audiences worldwide.

From a formally trained chef, this output would be extraordinary—but from Leung, a former engineer who first entered the restaurant business in 2003 at age 42, it’s phenomenal.

But the freewheeling capital of global finance in which he began his culinary career hardly resembles the post-protest, pandemic-era Hong Kong of today: a city grappling with the realities of the National Security Law and bound to costly border regulations to control the spread of Covid-19, which have resulted in an exodus of people and companies alike.

All of which begs the question: what is “the Hong Kong story” today? In Leung’s case, as across much of the local F&B industry, finding the answer has required introspection.

“This year, I just really wanted to concentrate on recovering and getting inspired,” he says. “I tell people the best way to create is to rest and do nothing. I had a lot of that.”

The result of his time-out is a revamped Bo Innovation that is more surreal—and, dare we say it, more Instagram-worthy—than ever before. The new space was designed by Monique Lee of Mas Studio to even more concisely convey the essence of Hong Kong’s visual culture than in the previous location—this time, though, it’s largely for the consumption of the social media generation.

Walking into the restaurant is like entering a glitch in reality: a man-sized statue of a banana eating a miniature banana greets diners at the lift lobby, while a few paces away, in a main dining room coloured in the iconic palette of the red-white-blue “amah” bag, a tiger with a steamer of dumplings in the place of its head leaps over the service station. Flanking the counter of the open kitchen are two Bearbrick statuettes: one of the designer collectibles is painted to resemble Alfonso Wong’s cartoon hero Old Master Q, while the other, a Mickey Mouse, holds a scroll of Hong Kong’s controversial Article 23 national security legislation in one hand and a yellow umbrella in the other, a symbol of the protest movement in Hong Kong.

“I’m naughty, so I’ll always touch on religion and politics, one of which is illegal—but I don’t know which one,” Leung says of the new concept for Bo Innovation. “I do like to take things to the limit, and this is why I’m called extreme. Extreme Chinese, extreme politics—just extreme enough to get away with it.

“If there’s one thing I’ll say, it’s that I adapt very quickly.”

The opening ten-course tasting menu, titled The Masterpieces, is driven as much by visual impact as it is dedicated to famous works of art throughout history. It’s also the first time in years that a menu at a Leung restaurant has been wholly designed by the man himself.

This time, the Hong Kong element serves as a supporting character to the greats of art history. The opener is inspired by Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans and involves bites inspired by various Asian soups, placed on a rotating carousel, smoked under a glass dome, and stuck upright in, of course, a soup can. The next course, Dogs Playing Mahjong, riffs on Cassius Marcellus Coolidge’s Dogs Playing Poker, and comprises tiny tiles of geoduck, smoked abalone, Indian lettuce stem and shiso plum; while Fish Magic takes inspiration from Paul Klee’s painting of the same name, which deconstructs the Cantonese tradition of a whole steamed fish by serving meat (citrus halibut), liver (monkfish ankimo), scales and all on a polished bronze fish skeleton.

Bread also appears on the menu for the first time in the restaurant’s history, with Leung offering his take on the Covid-19 sourdough trend with a steamed mantou version. “What people don’t realise is, Chinese mantou is made the sourdough way. [The process involves] a starter; it’s not even new to Chinese culture, but it’s new because we never tried to sell it.”

Indeed, this sentiment of seeing Hong Kong in a way that is both familiar and alien underpins a meal at the new Bo Innovation—perhaps echoing the way in which many of us have been forced to reconcile the reality of a rapidly and drastically transformed city with our own memories of what once was.

Just a five-minute walk away, in what used to be the home of iconic European-style restaurant Jimmy’s Kitchen, another restaurant opening affords Leung the space to fully lean into nostalgia for the Hong Kong of yore.

Demon Celebrity is a double bill of Leung and Cheng Kam-Fu, the executive chef of one-Michelin-starred Celebrity Cuisine. Though Cheng is known for his faithful execution of Cantonese dishes, at Demon Celebrity both chefs will offer their elevated take on the “soy-sauce Western” cuisine unique to Hong Kong, which was no doubt influenced by the colonial-era dishes that were served at Jimmy’s Kitchen over a nine-decades-long lifespan.

The likes of lobster à la king and glutinous rice balls stuffed with crab roe grace the menu, alongside a roster of Cheng’s Cantonese dishes such as stuffed chicken wings with bird’s nest, fried pork maw with black beans, and sweet and sour pork fried in a soft batter—an artefact of old Hong Kong cuisine that is only found today at Chinese takeaways overseas, says Leung.

“Don’t expect any foam, powders or nitrogen. It’s more about comfort and taste, while activating a bit of excitement,” he says, describing the menu of Demon Celebrity as very much the product of a “happy marriage” of ideas between himself and Cheng.

“We’re very giving; we have a lot of respect for each other. He always puts me first and I try to put him first.”

As the morning wears on and the grey skies threaten to turn darker, I ask Leung if the very act of opening two new restaurants in Hong Kong is a vote of confidence in the city. “How do you feel?” he shoots back without pause, to which I reply that the old Hong Kong is undeniably gone—and whether the new Hong Kong is better or worse remains to be seen.

“Well, I think you got the old Hong Kong, and you’ve got what you perceive as the new Hong Kong with the new laws and the new people. There are a lot of people that have left, but we’ve always had that. It’s the third exodus: the first one was after the riots of ’67, and the second one prior to the Handover. This time, you’re going to have a lot of people coming in as well, but it’s a question of how much confidence you have in them.

“Don’t have confidence in the place; have confidence in yourself first,” Leung concludes. If that isn’t a pure declaration of willpower, then I don’t know what is.

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