10th August 2026 – (Hong Kong) The century-old Woo Cheong Pawn Shop on Johnston Road in Wan Chai is again lighting up social media after diners found its three restaurant floors shut at once, with online restaurant listings and the group’s Instagram marking the venues closed.
The landmark is a row of four linked Guangzhou-style tong lau with verandah galleries, built between 1888 and the early 1900s at 60-66 Johnston Road. The Urban Renewal Authority spent more than HK$15 million restoring it in 2007 before leasing the block for upmarket bars and restaurants. The striking shell has since acquired a reputation among locals for a “dining closure curse”, with tenants turning over repeatedly.
Western restaurant The Pawn shut in 2021. Its successor, Woo Cheong Tea House, lasted only about two years and left by the end of 2023. Oscar-winning actress Sophia Loren’s co-founded Italian brand then took several floors, serving Neapolitan pizza, fine Italian cooking and a music bar, and briefly became a city talking point after arriving as the label’s first overseas outpost.
That run has now collapsed. Ground-floor Sophia Loren Pizzeria, first-floor Casa Sophia Loren and the second-floor music lounge all show as closed on restaurant search platforms, and the group’s official Instagram simply reads “Closed”. Casa Sophia Loren had already announced in February that mounting operating pressure forced it to shut and concentrate resources elsewhere; by May the brand was still insisting online that it was not leaving and urging diners to “trust your tastebuds”. Within months the lights across the rest of the block had gone out as well.
Online reaction mixed gloom with dark humour. Some said the whole of Wan Chai Road looked empty. Others blamed a vanished expatriate crowd that once propped up the downstairs bar, arguing closure was inevitable once big spenders left. A former customer who returned after the change of hands called the food mediocre and gave up. Several argued Western fine dining no longer fits Hong Kong: a tea house or dim sum parlour might work better, and expensive restaurant concepts have no market in the city that exists today.
Suggestions for the building’s next life ranged from exhibitions, markets and a community living room to a haunted-house escape room. The most popular punchline, though, was to restore the original trade. In a weak economy, many said, running a pawnshop again would make more commercial sense than another short-lived dining concept.