Life Style

Sometimes you can be spoiled for choice when it comes to things to do at weekends in Hong Kong. Do not despair – we have cherry-picked some to make your life easier.From a crossover pianist’s latest Hong Kong performances to the return of the Affordable Art Fair to an unmissable Tom Cruise action film and a burger pop-up, there is plenty to see and do over the next few days.1. Shogun Burger pop-upThe Regent Hong Kong hotel, in Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon, is playing host to Japan’s gourmet Shogun Burger brand until May 27.Shogun Burger was launched in 2016 by Taiki Honda, who comes from a family of yakiniku specialists – so he knows his beef. The brand now has more than 30 outlets across Japan. The pop-up brings to Hong Kong its signature Wagyu beef burgers, made with Japanese black Wagyu and...

Thomas Caro is the executive chef of Rex Wine & Grill, which is now rebranded as a French steakhouse. He spoke to Andrew Sun.I tend to eat in a very polarised way: very regimented and healthy, or purely for pleasure and comfort.Growing up in the French countryside, I remember walking to our village’s farm with my dad to buy eggs and milk, and picking cherries, Reine Claude plums – also known as greengages – and apricots at my grandparents’.My grandmother, Geneviève, was an exceptional cook, making classic cuisine bourgeoise – middle-class home cooking – staples every Sunday for lunch. Grandpa Jean, who cultivated my love of food, made endless batches of jam, stored in his basement cellar to be given away during the year.A pizza from Fiata Pizza. Photo: Fiata PizzaSignature dishes at Ne...

Apple is aiming to release smart glasses at the end of next year as part of a push into artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced gadgets, but it has shelved plans for a smartwatch that can analyse its surroundings with a built-in camera.Company engineers are ramping up work on the glasses – a rival to Meta Platforms’ popular Ray-Bans – in a bid to meet the year-end 2026 target, according to people with knowledge of the matter.Apple would start producing large quantities of prototypes at the end of this year with overseas suppliers, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the products have not been announced.The iPhone maker is looking to join the emerging trend of AI-powered devices – an area where it faces fresh competition.OpenAI said Wednesday that it was teaming up with fo...

This is the 51st instalment in a biweekly series profiling major Hong Kong pop culture figures of recent decades.Born in Hong Kong in 1971 to a mother who as a beauty queen won the city’s 1962 Miss Exhibition Pageant, actor Julian Cheung Chi-lam once said he was a “pretty rough guy from an ordinary family”.His extended family has no shortage of entertainers, though – his maternal uncle, Charlie Cho Cha-lee, is an actor known for his soft porn film roles, while his cousin Anna Ueyama was an actress before she switched to working in insurance.Cheung’s parents separated when he was a child and, when he was 16, he and his father moved to Sydney, Australia. In 1990, Cheung was introduced to a talent manager through Ueyama while he was visiting Hong Kong during a summer holiday.Julian Cheung at ...

4/5 starsLove on Trial is an absorbing look at the Japanese music industry inspired by real events.Unveiled in the Cannes Premiere sidebar of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Koji Fukada’s film has a universal quality. The story may centre around a J-pop girl group, but the exploration of pressures put on young performers feels like it could also apply to Western groups.The story is about Happy Fans, a quintet who are rapidly becoming popular with teens.The movie starts with them busy signing autographs, offering handshakes and posing for selfies at a meet-and-greet. The young band members are hard-working, aware the team of adults around them depend on them to make a living.

For Marino D’Antonio, the newly appointed executive chef at 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana Macau, cooking is clearly in his blood.Sipping an espresso in quintessential Italian style, D’Antonio recounts how his father travelled from southern Italy to Lombardy to visit his sister who had opened a restaurant after moving there with her husband. It was there – because of that restaurant – that D’Antonio’s parents met and fell in love. It’s the perfect origin story for a chef: Fellini would have been proud.D’Antonio was always destined to become a chef, it seems. His parents held respectable jobs in engineering and accounting, but he admits to being “very naughty” at school and not particularly inclined to studying. Following in his parents’ footsteps seemed unlikely. “There weren’t many opportunities...

The game of mahjong brings back nostalgic memories for many among the Chinese diaspora. Maybe they remember the unmistakable clacking sound of the tiles being shuffled, or their relatives yelling out “pong!” from across the room, excitedly claiming the tile they had been waiting for.It is no different for Nicole Wong, who grew up around the game but never quite learned it herself until the summer after she graduated from university, in 2009.At the time, she was staying at her New Zealand-Chinese paternal grandparents’ home in Dunedin, on New Zealand’s South Island. It was her first time visiting them for an extended period of time without her parents – and her grandparents decided that she, too, should join their lively, impassioned games of mahjong.As they explained the rules and played g...

Chinese photographer Xiaoling Li has won a global food-focused photography competition with a heartwarming image showing elderly women enjoying spring rolls.The image, Elderly Having Delicious Food, was taken in Shuangliu Ancient Town in China’s Sichuan province.“The elderly ladies in the picture are ‘setting up a Dragon Gate formation’,” contest organisers quote Li as saying. “This is an expression used in China to refer to neighbourhood friends coming together to chat, gossip and share stories.“They eat the famous Sichuan ‘spring rolls’. Food makes these people happy; they enjoy a beautiful and joyful life.”La Matassa. A Real Work of Craftsmanship by Diego Marinelli won the food in action category. Fresh pasta is a symbol of Italy’s cultural heritage. Matassa pasta is made in Irpinia in ...

This article contains spoilers.Lead cast: Bona, Yook Sung-jae, Kim Ji-hoonLatest Nielsen rating: 9.8 per centBona (Twenty-Five Twenty-One) plays Yeo-ri, a spectacles maker who has long attempted to deny the powers and responsibility that go with being born to a line of shamans.

“We’re all Star Wars nuts,” Barry Ray says as his wife, Melissa, and daughter Evie play nearby.Evie knows all the Star Wars characters from multiple readings of the Little Golden Books series, which retells stories from the sci-fi franchise for children. She is wearing a Princess Leia costume so, in keeping with the canon, her parents are dressed as Darth Vader and Padmé Amidala.They have travelled from Granbury, Texas, to celebrate Evie’s sixth birthday in the middle of a 40-hectare (100-acre) dry lake bed that is the next best thing to Tatooine. The previous night, they had watched the 1977 original, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, inside a two-bedroom cave.“We’ve had a great time,” Ray says, “and it’s an experience she won’t ever forget.”“It” is OutpostX, a swathe of raw desert in B...