Kennedy Town

Kennedy Town is where Hong Kong Island’s MTR line simply ends, which gives the whole neighbourhood a slightly abrupt, edge-of-the-map feeling that I found strangely appealing after a week of the density further east. The waterfront promenade near Sai Wan Swimming Shed has become one of the more low-key sunset spots on the Island, but what pulled me back a second evening wasn’t the view — it was the row of old-school dai pai dong-style seafood restaurants set up right along the water, tables spilling almost to the railing, cooking with the kind of casual confidence that only comes from decades in the same spot.

We ordered salt-and-pepper squid, a whole steamed fish that the waiter picked for us out of a tank without asking much beyond a nod of approval, and a plate of stir-fried water spinach with fermented tofu, all of it arriving fast and hot the way food does when a kitchen has done exactly this order a thousand times before. The MTR extension out here in 2014 brought a wave of new cafes and craft beer bars, and Kennedy Town now has a genuinely split personality — young professionals with laptops in the new coffee shops a block inland, and an older harbour crowd still eating seafood at plastic tables facing the water, the two groups overlapping without much friction.

Smithfield Road and the streets around the old public housing estates hold a proper wet market that’s stayed largely unbothered by the neighbourhood’s gentrification, selling fish straight off boats that still dock nearby, dried goods, and a stretch of noodle and congee shops that cater to residents rather than the new arrivals. I bought dried shrimp here for a soup Lia wanted to try recreating back home, and the vendor spent a genuinely unnecessary amount of time explaining the size grades to me, which I appreciated even though I understood maybe half of it.

What I liked most about Kennedy Town was the sense of being at an actual edge — the University of Hong Kong sits on the hill just above, students spilling down into the neighbourhood’s cafes, while the waterfront below still runs on fishing-village time. It’s a short tram or MTR ride from Central, but it felt, in the space of that ride, like arriving somewhere with genuinely different priorities.

When to go: Early evening, timed for sunset over the harbour and the seafood restaurants opening for dinner service. The wet market is best visited in the morning before 10am.