The festive season is easily the busiest, most celebratory time of year. Between lively year-end team parties and meticulously planned engagements to birthdays and even those long-awaited extended family dinners, for many the hustle and bustle of the season of celebrations can mean packed calendars, double bookings and back-to-back dinners. While the season is filled with joy, sometimes the pressure and stress can peak a bit higher. In our dining rooms the desire to execute every moment and move with excellence is even higher, but our team takes the challenge in stride. We are in the art of making memories.

For us, hospitality is about more than just working in a restaurant or being part of a hospitality team, we are storytellers and memory-makers and that means having a shared dedication and belief that every opening and every new idea is about creating exceptional experiences for our guests – and for each other.

While the restaurants and culinary experiences themselves are the framework for these moments, what really drives what we do to the next level are the people. The teams on the floor and behind the scenes who make sure that, night-in and night-out, every guest gets the thoughtful hospitality they have come to expect from us. They are the same people who work so hard to take care of their own teams, especially during a time where distance can feel greater, homesickness takes a starring role and the frantic pace of the dining rooms runs the show.

Occasionally, we get it right, we strike gold and create a moment that leaves an impact on a guest and the team long after they leave, and we are reminded of why we love what we do. We asked some of our team to recall one of their most memorable festive season moments, and this is what they had to say.

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Nina Brown, Guest Relations: 

Birthday celebrations, especially during the holidays, can feel extra important, you don’t want it to get lost in all the other festivities. We had a guest email us one afternoon who was joining us at Magistracy Dining Room for his father’s 74th birthday. He let us know how excited they were to come, his father, a solicitor, having moved to Hong Kong for work and tried his first cases in The Magistracy – so this was a kind of coming full circle for him and we were able to welcome him home. The guest didn’t expect anything, but we couldn’t help but feel inspired by this connection to the history of the building. We wanted to make sure that this evening was as memorable for him as possible from beginning to end.

We organised a bottle of champagne, signed by the whole team to greet their group and walked him through the entire building – the same halls he used to walk in decades before. We spoke to him about our plans for space and presented him with a framed illustration of The Magistracy as a gift for choosing to celebrate this special moment with us. It is these ties to the fabric of Hong Kong’s story that inspire us the most and we were lucky to have had the opportunity to try and make this one moment special.

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Chef Karys Plaxe, Butter: 

The holidays can feel extra hectic and there was one evening just after we had closed down that a guest came knocking on the door at Butter. They were on their way to a party but completely forgot to organise a cake! No celebration (especially a birthday!) is complete without a cake, so we did our best to get her what she needed. She let us know the cake and while it was being made, we made all the small details just right – from adding a plaque with a special message to getting a card for the birthday girl and tying the cake up with a bow. They were overwhelmed by the gesture and were excited to see behind the scenes. They came back a week later and bought another cake!

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Gigi Nicolas, General Manager, BELON and Magistracy Dining Room:

The festive season is a time when many guests choose to spend their important moments with us, and there is a certain energy and enthusiasm that thrums through the dining room at that time of year. Last year we had a guest who reached out to us to plan his proposal. On the phone and via email he was very certain of what he needed to do and how we could help, but on the day, they arrived for dinner, and we could tell immediately how nervous he was.

We welcomed them with bubbles and all throughout the dinner did our best to try to make conversation and lighten the mood, but he was so nervous! Finally, towards the end of the meal he looked even more pale than at the beginning and we weren’t certain he was going to pop the question.

We slowed the pace of the dinner a bit and tried to break the spell before dessert. We offered a tour of the kitchen, introduced them to the chef and, since they were wine lovers, showed them some of our most interesting bottles. This opportunity to walk around seemed to be just what he needed, he finally loosened up and I am happy to say that she finally had the chance to say yes. The biggest success – he didn’t faint!

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Charles Somasekar, Associate Director of Operations:

Over the years we have had a strong internship and MIT programme at Black Sheep and we are able to give people from all over the world the opportunity to live in work in Hong Kong. They are the future of hospitality, so we take working and training them in our way of hospitality very seriously.

This can be a challenging time of year for those who are joining us from abroad and they can deal with quite a bit of homesickness. There was one year where we had a young graduate join us, it was their very first job and first time away from home. She had already been with us for about eight months, and she was really looking forward to going home at the tail end of the festive season, but she couldn’t afford the ticket. It’s important for us to put our community first and to support each other, so the rest of the team all pulled together and did a small fundraiser to get her the money so she could spend some of the festive season with her family back home. She was so stunned and grateful – that’s what I call Christmas magic!

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Chef Luca Marinelli, Motorino:

The best part of hospitality is that we have the power to transform someone’s day. Not many people can say that. Small gestures can be so meaningful and often we are unaware of it in the moment. Just after Christmas one year, a lovely couple came in to celebrate their wedding anniversary with their toddler. I guessed that with a little one they did not get much time to go out and even less time to themselves. It was early in the evening, and we often hold pizza making parties at Motorino, so our team brought the toddler to the kitchen to ‘help’ make pizzas, giving the couple as much alone time as we could. At the end of their meal, we toasted their anniversary with limoncello for the adults and a shot of milk for the toddler. It was a really fun night for everyone and was made even better when they emailed the next day to say how unforgettable and special their time with us had been.

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Looking for last minute Christmas or New Year’s dinner plans? Visit All We Want For The Holidays for everything we have going on.

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