Everybody’s Got Something Good To Say — Harcourt, Altrincham’s Hong Kong Inspired Pub
“When we opened, local people thought we were a restaurant because they never expect Asian people to run a pub,” Priscilla So tells me.
We’re sat in her pub chatting about why the Hong Kong-inspired venue, Harcourt, which she runs with husband Brian Hung in Altrincham, Greater Manchester, is so special. For once it’s best described by a word used wrongly 99% of the time—authentic. In fact, it’s authentic in so many ways: in its food, in its beer, and especially in its modern welcome.
Let’s start with its food, which isn’t of China but of Hong Kong specifically. “People at the start were like: “do you have dim sum?,” Brian says. “Don’t get too excited, we don't have dim sum.”
Instead the food is best described as Hong Kong café-style, but presented as European tapas and is especially “suitable for beer”, as Brian understates. The dishes are exquisitely cooked by three Hong Kong-trained chefs, led by Brian, and carefully matched with beers by Brian, who presently works as barrel programme manager for Manchester’s Cloudwater Brew Co.
Photography by Matthew Curtis
There are 14 heavily rotated taps, with two beers also usually available on cask plus two permanent lines: Cloudwater’s Piccadilly Pilsner alongside its session pale, Happy. While we talk I sip on a light and pleasingly citrusy hazy pale ale from Squawk, (a brewery that was recently acquired by Moorhouses of Lancashire.)
“Because we’ve got the traditional Chinese character outside [on the sign] the locals didn’t expect us to be a pub,” Priscilla says. “They thought we were a Chinese restaurant.”
“Some people thought maybe we’re just a restaurant serving some beers.” When customers who were sceptical about the food smelt the dishes being brought through, however, it turns out they couldn’t resist temptation.
Harcourt reminds me of a great desi pub in that it mixes an important aspect of Asian culture in a British bar setting, offering a unique welcome so that the visitor believes they are visiting a home away from home. The best of Britain. The best of Hong Kong. The best of Manchester.
Most of all Harcourt shows how we can be welcoming to unfamiliar cultures and faces in areas not renowned for diversity. Britain can be a haven for people fleeing persecution at a time when this narrative is forever being pulled to the political right. How we can be better.
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Pubs like Harcourt feel like a fairy tale during a time when we are craving hope but, like all Grimm brothers stories, there is a distressing undercurrent—after all people don’t tend to flee countries unless they are facing persecution, or much worse.
In fact, by even giving this uncontroversial interview where we talk about duck tongue as much as politics, Brian and Priscilla tell me about the potential risks that threaten them should they return to Hong Kong.
“When we opened we got asked so many times about the political situation in Hong Kong,” Priscilla says. “[The articles] have our names and photos… It makes things more sensitive.”
Priscilla trained as a journalist, which isn’t a profession any sane person would want to pursue in the special administrative region of China, as democracy becomes more and more alien to it with each passing year.
““Don’t get too excited, we don’t have dim sum.””
You wouldn’t want to be a reporter unless you’re willing to be a Chinese government mouthpiece, as more and more news agencies that are independent are closed down, suppressing the aftermath of the Umbrella Revolution a decade ago.
“You could feel they wanted to restrict what reporters say,” says Priscilla, who joined peaceful protests when she was a student. “I was lost when I graduated [in 2018] and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in my career.”
It was when she was enjoying a beer in The Oak Crafted, a fashionable Hong Kong beer and whisky venue, that an ex-partner suggested Priscilla should pursue a career in beer. Although in stable employment at the time, she had no passion left for it, and so she found a job in a bottle shop popular within the local homebrewing scene. It was here that she first met Brian.
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“Drinking culture in Hong Kong is relatively not that popular,” Brian tells me. “Unlike Japan or South Korea they have their own beverages [sake or soju] and [large] breweries. In Hong Kong we don’t have such a thing.”
“When I was young, people’s impression of bars and pubs was not good. And alcoholic beverages many years ago didn’t have a positive image,” he adds.
When Brian was growing up yum cha—tea and Dim Sum—was popular, and it wasn’t until he got to university that the pub became a thing. Because of this Brian wasn’t especially knowledgeable about beer compared to British people of the same age and it took a Damascene moment for him to fall hard for beer.
A cousin took him to TAP in Kowloon, reportedly the first bar in Hong Kong to offer craft beer, and he had a barrel aged imperial stout. “The flavour was totally out of anyone’s expectation,” he tells me, adding that today he still relishes that beer style. The passion instilled in him by that beer fired him up so much he wanted to tell people about it by becoming a YouTube presenter.
“After about 30 minutes [of filming] I realised I didn’t really understand the beverage,” he admits.
This bout of self-awareness led him to self study to be a Cicerone level 1 and investigate home brewing, which is what led him into Priscilla’s universe. He started joining regular bottle shares, and got a job working as a bar manager for Taiwan brewery Zhang Men’s HK 24-taps outpost, while in his spare time he began studying brewing science.
He moved to Young Master brewery where he was trained in production, and then at the beginning of the pandemic moved to South Korea to Gorilla Brewing Co, a keg-only brewery where he was tasked with quickly switching over to can production to ensure its survival.
During this time Brian and Priscilla decided they wanted to set something up for themselves, owing to the fact that there was a healthy market for quality drinks from local breweries developing. They relocated to Manchester in 2022 after the BNO (British National Overseas) visa scheme was launched the year before, which allowed Hong Kong residents to live in the UK.
“I’d never been to the UK before,” Priscilla says. “Everything was new to me. But Manchester was vibrant, cosmopolitan and culturally diverse.”
After Brian joined Cloudwater’s production team, in 2023 the duo picked Altrincham, at the far south westerly corner of Greater Manchester for their pub because they wanted a safe, relaxed area. The town was already home to a large Hong Kong diaspora, drawn to the borough of Trafford where Altrinchham lies because of its high-ranking school system. A remarkable 40% of their customers are drawn from this community, initially visiting for a taste of home thanks to the food, but just like Brian and Priscilla before them are slowly being converted to the beers that are on offer.
“We get a lot of female [customers],” Priscilla says. “But one person who worked in beer told me ‘it’s so weird to see women running a pub. Women just serve the drinks and that’s it.’ I impressed him but is there really something impressive? I just do what I need to do.”
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At first, Harcourt’s food may have leaned too heavily towards the authentic, especially when it came to offal. “The feedback we got from the duck tongue is that it was like French kissing a duck,” Priscilla tells me. “Different groups of people said the same thing!”
““Everything was new to me. But Manchester was vibrant, cosmopolitan and culturally diverse.””
Ah, British tastes. Maybe this delicacy proved too much because of our inherited suspicion of offal, where previous generations were served dishes during rationing as meat replacements. For South-East Asian communities, offal is a real treat.
Priscilla also raised a few eyebrows when she served marinated beef shin (AKA shank), cold. “We thought the locals may like it because it was meat,” she says. “They didn’t accept it so we have a hot version of it which is [still] controversial because the shank is not a very meaty part.”
“I need to keep answering: ‘That’s how we have traditionally have it in Hong Kong.’ We try hard to promote authentic food.”
Some diners accept this, others don’t. But drawing an imaginary line in the heart of Altrincham is important as it’s very easy for any new diaspora to bend their culture too much when they are in a white space.
And this authenticity is hard fought for especially when it comes to ingredients—for example a prawn paste is made by mashing together numerous shelled prawns, a base ingredient which comes much cheaper from a cash and carry in Hong Kong.
“You get the odd remark [warning] about how the area will be changed [by the Hong Kong diaspora],” Craig Leah, a Harcourt regular who has lived in the area his whole life, tells me. “But people like Priscilla and Brian have a great work ethic and are setting up businesses in places that were closed or failing. I put people right when I hear negative comments.”
“Harcourt has added a new dimension to Altrincham and is a great addition to the town. The food is fantastic because before they opened, Altrincham only had traditional British-Chinese food with heavy sauces,” he adds.
And this is why Harcourt is special as it’s so easy to give some of the locals what they think they want, when really Priscilla and Brian have created something special—(probably) the only Hong Kong pub in Britain. There’s plenty of HK restaurants, but this is the only pub where you can come just for a drink and dine when the fancy takes you.
But there’s one area that they really listen to the locals over and that’s the beers. Here Pale Ales are king, and luckily Manchester and the surrounding areas specialise in this style due to its soft, delicate water. It has to be craft, though, as beers, such as Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, fared as well as the duck tongue.
“We are doing something positive,” Priscilla says. “A lot of local people have told us they are glad that they have us in Altrincham. They said we bring something different—a positive cultural impact to this community. It feels like we have a mission.”
