‘Good coffee, kind service’: Cafe Corridor’s closure in Hong Kong means saying a bitter goodbye to one of the city’s earliest speciality coffee bars

Founded by Felix Wong in 2001, Cafe Corridor – at the end of a very long corridor in a Causeway Bay building – will serve its last orders on January 31

Wong reveals why it has had such a strong following, his mission when it comes to serving customers and why ‘you need to have heart’ to serve coffee

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Cafe Corridor founder Felix Wong at his shop in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. Cafe Corridor is to close at the end of January after 22 years. Photo: May Tse

Published: 12:45pm, 26 Jan 2023Updated: 10:30am, 27 Jan 2023

Over the past two years, the stream of new coffee bars and cafes – each with varying levels of Instagrammability – have become a constant in Hong Kong’s dining landscape.

There are no official figures save for what you might glean from the painstaking documentation of fresh cafe launches by coffee influencers on social media but, by rough estimation, more than 150 coffee shops have opened in the city since 2021. What is less clear is how many have failed the litmus test of longevity.

Some of Hong Kong’s coffee shop pioneers – The Cupping Room, NOC and % Arabica among them – have since become juggernauts in their own right, with footprints on prime real estate and even branches beyond the city.

Every week, a new venture pops another pin in the now famous FOV – HK Coffee Map (run by influencer Helen Kwok), which lists more than 500 cafes and has over 2 million views. There is a cafe for every mood and inclination – vegan-friendly spots where the oat milk comes with no extra charge and cafes that moonlight as bars, serving whiskies and natural wines.

Cafe Corridor was one of the earliest speciality coffee bars in Hong Kong. Photo: May Tse

The coffee landscape has changed so dramatically over the past two decades that it is easy to forget a place like Cafe Corridor, which is a veritable time capsule. Founded by Felix Wong Kim-fei, it is one of the earliest speciality coffee bars that fed the thirst for quality brews when it opened on Russell Street, in Causeway Bay, back in 2001.

Occupying a small shop space at the end of an unusually long corridor (hence the name) in a run-down walk-up, the cafe can also be seen as the antithesis of today’s polished coffee shop aesthetic.