Second Draft

Causeway Bay's Counter-Argument

Hong Kong's restaurant identity is built, in most international accounts, around Cantonese banquet rooms, French-trained fine dining, and a Michelin density that few cities can match. The city that produced Caprice, Amber, 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana, and Ta Vie tends to be discussed through a lens of tasting menus and white tablecloths. The gastropub format barely registers in those conversations — which is precisely what makes Fashion Walk's Second Draft worth paying attention to. It operates where the city's formal dining culture goes quiet, and it has done so with enough consistency to earn three consecutive years of recognition from Opinionated About Dining, landing at #116 in their 2025 Casual in Asia ranking.

Fashion Walk is a pedestrian-friendly stretch of Causeway Bay that leans toward retail and mid-range food, not destination dining. Second Draft sits at H01, Kingston Street, in a format that signals pub before it signals restaurant: the beer program is the first statement, the food is its complement, and the combination has attracted a recognisably loyal audience. The 4.4 Google rating across 708 reviews is the kind of score that accumulates through repeat visits rather than one-off occasions.

The Gastropub Format in an Asian Context

The gastropub as a category has evolved differently across regions. In London — where venues like The Jugged Hare anchor the British tradition of serious food inside a drinking establishment , the form arrived with a clear cultural inheritance: working-class pub architecture, refined by a kitchen with actual ambition. In New York, iterations like Nowon and Osamil have adapted the structure around Korean influences. Gilt Bar in Chicago refined the format into something closer to a neighbourhood anchor. Across American markets, places like Camden Spit & Larder in Sacramento, Damn the Weather in Seattle, High West Distillery & Saloon in Park City, and Mad Dogs & Englishmen in Tampa each solve the format differently depending on what their local drinking culture demands.

In Hong Kong, the challenge is different again. A city where Cantonese dining , including full-ceremony rooms like Forum , holds deep cultural authority, and where the imported fine-dining tier is well-resourced and dominant, leaves the gastropub without an obvious local tradition to fold into. Second Draft's answer has been to treat the format as a meeting point: imported pub structure, local and regional ingredients, and the kind of food that reads across cultural references without making any single one its headline.

Where May Chow's Approach Fits the Scene

Chef May Chow is one of Hong Kong's more discussed figures in the city's mid-tier and casual dining circuit. Her profile sits at the intersection of technique and accessibility , a position that suits the gastropub format better than it would a tasting-menu room. The editorial angle that applies here is not biographical but structural: the gastropub works in Hong Kong when it can draw on the same intersection of imported culinary methods and locally sourced or regionally inflected products that drives the city's more serious kitchens at higher price points.

This is a pattern that appears at price tiers well above Second Draft's position. The Japanese-French synthesis at Ta Vie, or the ingredient-led French cooking at Amber, both depend on proximity to the produce networks of southern China and Southeast Asia while applying European and Japanese technique. The gastropub version of that exchange is less formal, less expensive, and less likely to generate international column inches , but the underlying dynamic is the same. Second Draft operates in that register: a kitchen informed by technique absorbed from outside the region, working with the ingredient access that Hong Kong's position as a trading city provides.

Three Years of Consecutive Recognition

Opinionated About Dining's Asia rankings draw on a surveying methodology that privileges repeat visitor behaviour and peer-level critical input rather than inspector visits, which makes sustained presence across multiple years a meaningful signal. Second Draft appeared as a Recommended entry in the 2023 OAD Leading Restaurants in Asia list, moved to a ranked position at #358 in 2024, and placed at #116 in the 2025 OAD Casual in Asia list. That trajectory across three consecutive editions is not the result of a single strong year , it reflects a program that has held its level while the judging pool becomes more competitive.

For context, OAD's casual category in Asia covers a wide range of formats and price points across the region's most active dining cities. A top-150 placement in 2025 positions Second Draft inside a relatively small cohort of casual venues that have achieved sustained critical visibility, even if the format and setting remain deliberately low-key.

When to Go and What to Know

Second Draft's hours follow a pattern common to gastropubs across markets: weekday openings at 3pm give way to later afternoon starts on the weekend (noon on Saturday and Sunday), with midnight closings across the week. This makes it a practical option for late-afternoon drinking that runs into dinner, or a post-dinner destination for those working through the formal dining circuit in Causeway Bay or further afield.

Fashion Walk itself is walkable from Causeway Bay MTR station, a short exit from one of the city's busiest interchange points. The immediate area has enough density that Second Draft functions naturally as either a destination or a stop within a longer evening.

Logistics Compared

The table above frames Second Draft's position clearly: it occupies a different band from the city's formal dining tier entirely, with its recognition coming from a different critical methodology and its format aimed at a different kind of visit. That separation is not a weakness , it is the point.

Planning Your Visit

Second Draft is at H01, Fashion Walk, 9 Kingston Street, Causeway Bay. It opens at 3pm Monday through Friday and at noon on Saturday and Sunday, closing at midnight throughout the week. No phone number or booking website is listed in current records, which suggests walk-in access is the primary mode , consistent with the pub format.

For a broader view of where Second Draft fits within Hong Kong's dining, drinking, and hospitality options, see our full guides: Hong Kong restaurants, Hong Kong bars, Hong Kong hotels, Hong Kong wineries, and Hong Kong experiences.

What People Recommend at Second Draft

Because Second Draft operates as a gastropub with May Chow's kitchen at its centre, the consistent recommendation pattern across the venue's critical and public reception points toward the food-and-drink pairing as the primary draw rather than individual dishes in isolation. OAD recognition across three years reflects a program rather than a moment: the kitchen's approach of applying technique to approachable formats, backed by a serious beer selection, is what the venue's audience returns for. Specific menu items are not confirmed in current records, and dish descriptions sourced outside verified data are not included here. The format itself , where the drink selection and the food share equal billing , is the consistent anchor across the venue's public reputation. Awards anchor the cuisine and chef credentials; the 4.4 rating across 708 Google reviews anchors the consistency of the experience across a large sample of visits.