Man Hon Luk ate at a Michelin-starred barbecue joint in Austin in 2021, went home, and spent the next five years learning to do it in London with Hong Kong flavours. His first permanent room opened in Hackney Wick in July 2026.
The origin is better than the usual chef’s-journey version because it was an accident. Luk was in Austin for a poker tournament, ate at InterStellar BBQ, and came back to London to learn Texan smoking properly — not as a concept, as a technique. Hon’s ran as a pop-up while he got it right, raised £36,000 by crowdfunding, and opened its first permanent site on 17 July 2026 in the old Silo space on Queen’s Yard.
He starts at five in the morning and smokes outdoors for up to twelve hours. Then he butchers at an open counter in front of the room, which is a decision rather than a floor plan — Texan barbecue is sold by the gram off the block, so the block is where the transaction happens, and hiding it would be a small lie about what the food is.
The Chinese half is not a garnish laid over the top. Beef short rib comes under a caramelised, chilli-spiked Sichuan-peppercorn crust; there is Taiwanese pork belly with fermented radish, five-spice ox cheek, smoked duck, and smoked lap cheong worked into the mac and cheese. The two traditions overlap more than the pitch suggests — both are unhurried, both are about fat and smoke and a long wait — which is why this reads as one cuisine rather than a fusion stunt.
Luk designed the room himself, in a red that runs floor to ceiling as a deliberate nod to Hong Kong. The tables and bar stools carry a custom pinwheel pattern by the designer Mo Tong; the private dining room has chairs and lighting by David B Ross; the speakers were built to order by Noise Control Audio, a French outfit founded by veterans of 1990s rave sound systems. That last detail explains the rest of the evening: after the last food order, the eighty-seat dining room turns into a music bar with DJs and live sets. Luk founded the record shop Vinyl Pimp in 2007, so this is the older half of his life reasserting itself.
Two honest limits. It is open Wednesday to Sunday only. And meat by the gram means meat until it is gone — turn up late on a Saturday and the short rib is a thing other people had.