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The Langham Hotel completed its US$35 million upgrade in 2003, and the food at T’ang Court continues to astonish. Peerless creativity and an insistence onwok chi (wok cooking at the highest achievable temperature) are the keys to T’ang Court’s greatness.

From its epic Sunday brunches, through to the speechless aplomb of its candlelit dinners, this sleek patrician of the Southside has a stately lead over the competition. The details are sheer class (when did you last have caesar salad made, as it should be, at your tableside?) and the ambience utterly surfeited with the “wow” factor (see The Verandah).

Royalty, Hollywood stars and heads of state have dined here by the worshipful score, for in terms of French cuisine east of Suez, Gaddi’s is unquestionably the holy grail. Expect the big-budget works: from the aristocratic menu to stratospheric service levels. If you like ithaute , you’ve found your heaven (see Gaddi’s).

You might not foresee yourself travelling to Hong Kong in order to eat Italian, but you might for Nicholini’s. Awarded the Insegna del Romano for being the best Italian restaurant outside of Italy, Nicholini’s sits comfortably at the apex of Northern Italian cooking, each dish an essay in freshness and charm.

If there has been one Hong Kong restaurateur consistently and laudably pushing the style envelope over the last decade, it has been Nichole Garnaut. But with Alibi, her latest venture, she succeeds with understatement, and the creative take on French cuisine has both depth and confidence. The crowd is beautiful, the food more so (see Alibi).

The totality of M’s undeniable quirks – the mismatching cutlery, eccentric menu, the arty location (above the galleries of the Fringe Club) – come together in a riotously groovy whole. The food is Mediterranean and Middle Eastern influenced, although simply stating this does no justice to its free form improvisation of flavours. Superior stuff (see M at the Fringe).

Cantonese cuisine is the most artful of Chinese provincial varieties, and One Harbour Road is among the most artful of Cantonese restaurants. Be prepared then for a dining experience of unusual refinement, set off by the Grand Hyatt’s art deco fantasies. The restaurant endlessly wins deserved praise.

So moneyed, clubbish and upholstered, you could be sitting in St James’s in London. Except for the food: no London grill room could ever approximate the exemplary filets and sirloins turned out here. We are talking consummate mastery of skillet and skewer. No wonder the suits linger for hours over brandy and cigars (see The Mandarin Grill).

Vegetarians unable to face another helping of the slop and swill that passes for much animal-free cuisine will praise the creator for Kung Tak Lam. This light and airy Shanghainese does things with mere vegetables that could not be done, could not even be imagined, by most vegetarian restaurants elsewhere.

If you have longed for the day when you would stumble on a restaurant locked in a parallel 1970s universe – where the menu offers, without irony, such wide-collared classics as chicken Kiev and baked Alaska – then rejoice. For this is that day; Jimmy’s is that restaurant. Don’t pass up on a chance like this (see Jimmy’s Kitchen).