IFC Central, Harbour City TST, multiple HK locations
Founded in Hong Kong in 1987, Fook Ming Tong blends green, white, oolong, black, dark and floral teas under its own tea masters at shops in ifc mall, Harbour City, Sogo and the airport, pairing them with Yixing and Jingdezhen teaware and tea-tasting appointments.
Best for Traditional Anxi Tie Guan Yin and other tea-master-blended Chinese teas
Founded in 1987, Fook Ming Tong has built its retail footprint around Hong Kong's own high-traffic geography - shops in ifc mall in Central, Ocean Centre at Harbour City in Tsim Sha Tsui, Sogo in Causeway Bay, and a counter at Hong Kong International Airport - putting the tea in front of both local buyers and travelers passing through. The house sources and blends across six major tea categories - green, white, oolong, black, dark and floral - under its own tea masters' quality control, with particular emphasis on traditional Anxi Tie Guan Yin, sold loose or pressed into cakes for aged dark teas. Seasonal releases such as a 2026 spring collection bring in named varieties like Wuyi Da Hong Pao, Anxi Tie Guan Yin and Shifeng Long Jing. The tea list is paired deliberately with teaware - Yixing purple clay pots and Jingdezhen porcelain - and rounded out with a small line of tea-infused almond cookies, plus curated gift sets aimed at corporate and personal gifting alike. Fook Ming Tong also runs private tea-tasting appointments and wholesale accounts, and ships internationally through its own e-commerce platform, extending a nearly four-decade-old Hong Kong tea business well beyond its four physical counters.
LockCha has sourced small-batch Chinese teas from remote growing regions since 2003 at its Hong Kong Park flagship, adding a Tai Kwun location in 2018. Both pair loose-leaf pu-erh and oolong with an all-vegetarian dim sum menu, recognized among the world's best vegetarian restaurants.
Best for Loose-leaf pu-erh, oolong and vegetarian dim sum
LockCha Tea House has run its flagship location inside Hong Kong Park's gardens and lotus ponds since 2003, near the K.S. Lo Gallery of tea ware, with a second teahouse added at Tai Kwun in Central in 2018. The company traces further back to an earlier tea shop, and describes its buying approach as covering the full chain from plantation to packaging — weighing growing region, climate, and a grower's own care alongside the finished leaf — to source small-batch Chinese teas from remote producing areas rather than buying at volume from brokers. The menu runs to more than 100 teas, pu-erh and oolong prominent among them, served loose-leaf in traditional settings furnished with carved wood panels and calligraphy. What distinguishes LockCha from a typical Chinese teahouse is the kitchen: both locations serve an entirely vegetarian dim sum menu built to pair with the tea list rather than function as a separate restaurant. That pairing has drawn outside recognition, including a spot among American Express Essentials' picks for the world's best vegetarian restaurants and coverage from Condé Nast Traveler and AFAR — an unusual crossover for a business that started as a tea merchant rather than a restaurant.
NOC brands itself "coffee meets design." The Hong Kong roaster serves in-house-roasted espresso and pour-over inside deliberately minimalist, design-forward spaces, including its Graham Street original.
Best for Design-forward espresso from the original 2015 Graham Street roastery, Wallpaper*-recognized
NOC -- short for "Not Only Coffee" -- opened its first cafe on the slopes of Graham Street in Hong Kong's Soho district in 2015, founded by 2011 Hong Kong Barista Champion Chan Chak Sum and F&B veteran Benny Leung. The name states the founders' intent directly: they wanted spaces that paired serious espresso with design and food, rather than a coffee counter alone. That approach earned recognition beyond Hong Kong -- Wallpaper* magazine named NOC one of the "World's Top Coffee Shops for Design Lovers" in 2018, and it has also appeared on international best-coffee-shop lists compiled by outlets including Big Seven Travel. Leung was separately recognized as an Outstanding Young Entrepreneur in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area awards for the brand's cultural-creativity work. From the original Graham Street site, NOC has expanded to roughly half a dozen Hong Kong locations plus a Bangkok outlet, all built on the same bright, minimalist template and an in-house roasting program. The Graham Street cafe remains the brand's reference point: a small-footprint, design-forward espresso bar on Central's steep market streets, credited with helping set the tone for Hong Kong's third-wave coffee scene through the second half of the 2010s.
Hong Kong's pioneering specialty roaster, opened in Causeway Bay in November 2012 by Jennifer W.F. Liu. Ranked Hong Kong's top specialty coffee brand by Frost & Sullivan in 2017.
Best for Hong Kong's first specialty roaster, opened by Jennifer Liu in 2012.
The Coffee Academics traces back to 2010, when its founder, Jennifer W.F. Liu, opened a training studio in Causeway Bay meant as a space for the city's small but growing community of specialty coffee drinkers. Liu wasn't new to the trade — she'd already opened Caffè Habitu in 2003 — but the studio was aimed less at selling coffee than at teaching it.
The retail side followed in November 2012, with the first café opening at 38 Yiu Wa Street in Causeway Bay, built around the same idea: coffee education as much as coffee sales. It worked. Within five years, Frost & Sullivan ranked The Coffee Academics first in specialty coffee in Hong Kong for 2017, and the company has since expanded past 55 outlets across Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines — a rare case of a coffee-education project scaling into a regional chain without losing the original teaching bent.
Ying Kee Tea House was founded in 1881 by Chen Chao Ying in Guangzhou, more than a century before Hong Kong became its home.
Best for Pu-erh, oolong and jasmine teas from an 1881 Guangzhou house
Ying Kee Tea House was founded in 1881 by Chen Chao Ying in Guangzhou, more than a century before Hong Kong became its home. The business relocated to Hong Kong in 1950, in the wave of southward migration around the founding of the People's Republic, and has operated there continuously since — now run by the fourth generation of Chen's family, with nine shops spread across Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories.
Over 140 years of continuous trading has come with formal recognition alongside the reputation: Ying Kee holds Hong Kong's Top Brand Mark, ISO9001 certification, and a place in the government's Quality Tourism Services Scheme, plus a Hong Kong Quality Food Award in 2013. The house's range runs across pu-erh, oolong, jasmine, green, and white teas, selected by in-house tea masters, alongside its own teaware.
Few Hong Kong tea houses can point to a founding that predates the city's own status as a British colony's commercial hub by decades — Ying Kee's history began in Guangzhou and only became a Hong Kong story once the family moved the business south in 1950, a relocation now itself 75 years in the past.
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