Drifting between these three spots feels less like a night out, and more like eating your way through an unfinished Wong Kar-wai film.
If Wong Kar-wai is the city’s patron saint of mood, it’s because of those stretched-out moments: neon bleeding into wet streets, cigarette smoke hanging over a bar, strangers brushing past in narrow corridors. Now, a new wave of restaurants is trying to bottle that energy — swapping the cinema seat for a dining chair.
From a rebooted Dragon-i in Central, to Shenzhen’s cinematic Ren’er, and Mi Shang in Shanghai’s historic Rong Zhai, created with Prada and Wong himself, these three venues treat dinner like a film that never really ends.
Central’s Dragon-i, Central’s nightlife classic, remixed
Dragon-i is back. On paper, it’s still a club-restaurant. In reality, it feels more like a set waiting for the director to shout “Action”. The redesign leans into Wong Kar-wai’s way of framing people: entrance, bar, booths and dance floor are all treated like individual shots, stitched together by carefully plotted light and movement.
Neon strips slice through inky surfaces, walls and ceilings are kept clean so shadows can roam, and mirrors plus metal details catch and splinter the crowd. You’re not just having drinks; you’re being quietly written into the scene — maybe as the blur that slips past in the background, maybe as the close-up someone remembers the next morning.
Shenzhen’s Ren’er, Wes Anderson meets Wong Kar-wai over dim sum
Over in Shenzhen’s Qianhai Kerry Centre, Chinese restaurant Ren’er feels like what happens when Wong Kar-wai and Wes Anderson share a moodboard. Art Deco curves, hand-textured walls, hot-rolled steel and old-school Chinese architectural cues collide to create a room that feels retro, but not stuck in the past.
The whole place is staged like a theatre. By day, only the east wing runs as a café, washed in soft daylight and a calmer palette. Come evening, more rooms “switch on”, the lighting drops, colours get juicier and the contrasts crank up. You can sit in the exact same seat and feel like you’ve walked into a totally different act. It’s very Wong: time not as a straight timeline, but as something you keep looping back through, with a slightly different tint each round.
Shanghai’s Mi Shang, nostalgia and a house with history
Mi Shang, on the second floor of Rong Zhai in Jing’an, doesn’t try to compete with the city’s nightlife. Instead, it closes the door and builds its own world. Prada’s first standalone restaurant in Asia lives inside a 1918 mansion the brand took years to restore, and it feels like an elegant side plot spun off from the house’s long history.
Inside, the reference is loud and clear: “In the Mood for Love”. High-contrast finishes, layered mirrors, a layout that encourages you to catch yourself in reflection at stair turns and corridor corners — it all conspires to make you feel like you’ve wandered into a frame. The mood sits somewhere between romance and déjà vu. The menu, put together by an Italian star-chef team, keeps the storyline going, pinging diners between Milan and Shanghai course by course.
