From Skyline to Shoreline, With a Honeymoon in Between
At Toronto’s Nature & Neon, an immersive evening revealed a Hong Kong of electric city nights, quiet coastlines, unforgettable flavours and, perhaps, your next great love affair with travel.
Ashley Hassard and Evie Begy attend Nature and Neon at Illuminarium in Toronto.
There are dinners you attend, and then there are dinners that take you somewhere.
This one took us approximately 12,500 kilometres before the first course had even properly settled.
We were seated beneath a warm neon glow at Toronto’s Illuminarium, wine glasses catching little flashes of crimson, surrounded by the happy hum of a long table filled with people who, for the most part, had not arrived together. There is always something rather wonderful about that particular kind of dinner. You sit down beside strangers, someone pours the wine, someone else asks where you are from, and somewhere between the first bite and the second glass, strangers have a funny habit of becoming considerably less strange.
And then, quite literally, the walls began to move.
Toronto disappeared.
Hong Kong arrived.
Not the tidy, hold-still-for-the-camera version of Hong Kong. This one was alive. Streets flickered into motion around us. Towers climbed into the darkness. Harbour lights rippled across the room. Suddenly, dinner had a skyline.
Nature & Neon surrounded us with 360 degrees of the Hong Kong so many of us think we know: electric, glamorous, deliciously busy and seemingly incapable of going to bed.
And then it did something much more interesting.
It surprised us.
The neon gave way to green. The city softened into beaches, hills, coastal trails, outlying islands and stretches of countryside that felt almost impossible to reconcile with the skyscrapers we had been staring at moments earlier.
If your mental picture of Hong Kong begins and ends with a glittering skyline, consider this your invitation to widen the frame.
Because apparently Hong Kong has been keeping a few secrets.
A City That Refuses to Pick a Personality
This was, perhaps, the most seductive part of the evening.
Presented by Toronto Star Events in partnership with the Hong Kong Tourism Board, Nature & Neon was less a dinner about Hong Kong than an introduction to its many personalities.
City and sea. Tradition and reinvention. Dinner reservations and hiking shoes. The sort of rooftop glamour that warrants the good outfit, followed by a shoreline where nobody particularly cares what you are wearing.
And for honeymooners, newlyweds or couples dreaming about where they might disappear to next, that combination is rather compelling.
You do not have to choose between the trip and the vacation.
Hong Kong appears perfectly happy to give you both.
You can wake up in a sleek city hotel, wander through a bustling market, eat something extraordinary, hop on a ferry and somehow end the day beside the water. Tomorrow? Perhaps a trail. Perhaps a beach. Perhaps dim sum followed by cocktails several storeys above the city.
Perhaps all of it.
After all, you just got married. Surely that earns you the right to be a little greedy with your itinerary.
Chef Nick Liu and wine expert Carolyn Evans Hammond discuss the thoughtful pairings behind each course, sharing how every dish and pour was chosen to complement, surprise and bring the flavours of Hong Kong to life.
Then Chef Nick Liu Started Cooking
Of course, there is another particularly convincing way to fall for a destination.
Feed people.
Chef Nick Liu of Toronto’s celebrated DaiLo translated Hong Kong’s dance between heritage and reinvention into four courses, each one carrying its own little story to the table.
Influencer Ivan Mao takes in the evening, experiencing the flavours, stories and vibrant spirit of Hong Kong one pairing at a time.
We began with tomato salad layered with crab, bean thread, youtiao croutons, bloomed basil seed and Sichuan broth gelée.
And we need to discuss the tomatoes.
They came from Liu’s own garden, and somehow a room filled with projections, wine, travel stories and a rather spectacular dinner spent an impressive amount of time talking about tomatoes.
Deservedly so.
They were beautiful, generous, bursting with flavour and proof that sometimes the least showy ingredient on the plate walks away with the evening.
Then came a barbecue-stuffed chicken wing with pickled wild mustard greens, followed by whole fried trout with foie gras fat rice, three sauces and gai lan.
The food felt familiar without being predictable. There were flavours that seemed to carry memories with them, but every plate had one foot firmly planted in the present.
And that, of course, is where food becomes much more interesting than simply something delicious to eat.
Someone recognizes a flavour.
Someone tells a story.
Someone remembers their grandmother.
Someone else remembers a trip.
Suddenly, you are no longer just discussing dinner.
You are discussing where you come from.
And Then There Was French Toast
A sweet finale worth lingering over: Chef Nick Liu’s French toast—golden, decadent and every bit as delicious as it looks.
Dessert arrived in the form of Hong Kong French toast with pistachio butter, whipped coconut, condensed milk and pistachio praline.
It was rich. Nostalgic. Completely unapologetic.
In other words, exactly what dessert should be when nobody has invited restraint to dinner.
It also offered a rather delicious lesson in Hong Kong itself.
Cultures arrive. Traditions travel. Recipes change hands. Something borrowed becomes something new, then becomes so deeply woven into a place that imagining one without the other feels almost impossible.
Even the very British ritual of afternoon tea has found another life here, transformed into something heartier, louder and far less concerned with behaving itself.
Frankly, we approve.
Influencer Mike Di Carlo captures the moment, surrounded by the vibrant sights, sounds and immersive landscapes of Hong Kong.
A Very Good Reason to Keep Refilling the Glass
Wine expert Carolyn Evans Hammond carried us through Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling, into Chardonnay and finally Riesling Icewine, each pairing changing the conversation on the plate just slightly.
A sip brightened something.
Another softened it.
Another made you go back for the bite you had just eaten because apparently it needed further investigation.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong continued changing around us.
City lights became greenery. Greenery became shoreline. Dinner became storytelling.
And the table began doing something rather lovely of its own.
The Appetizer Before the Adventure
This may have been my favourite part of the evening.
Around one long, family-style table sat people from all over the world. Some were born here. Others were born abroad. Some carried deep personal connections to Hong Kong. Some knew Chef Nick through DaiLo. Others simply liked the promise of excellent food, excellent wine and an evening somewhere interesting.
A perfectly respectable travel philosophy, if you ask us.
But as the courses arrived, conversation began travelling too.
People talked about places they had been and places they still wanted to see. Recipes opened doors to family histories. A flavour reminded someone of childhood. Someone else's travel story quietly added a destination to another person's list.
This is the beautiful thing about travel: sometimes the journey begins long before you book the ticket.
Sometimes it begins because somebody sitting three seats away tells you a story.
Nature & Neon became, in that sense, an appetizer for Hong Kong itself.
Four courses offered us a little taste of what the destination might feel like, sound like and, quite literally, taste like.
Not enough to satisfy the curiosity.
Just enough to make it considerably worse.
For those who had already been, there was the unmistakable pull of I need to go back.
For those who had not, Hong Kong suddenly felt less like somewhere unknown and more like somewhere waiting.
And that is such a magical difference.
Hong Kong, Beyond the Postcard
Of course, the skyline deserves its reputation.
It is cinematic. It sparkles. It knows precisely how photogenic it is.
But Nature & Neon made a persuasive argument for looking beyond it.
There are quiet beaches. Mountain paths. Tranquil water. Green space. Outlying islands. Landscapes that seem to belong to an entirely different holiday until you realize they are part of the same destination.
Nearly three quarters of Hong Kong’s land area is countryside, with more than 40 per cent designated as country parks and special areas for conservation, recreation and education.
Read that again if you need to.
Because suddenly the honeymoon possibilities become rather interesting.
Imagine waking up among towers and ending the afternoon on a quiet shoreline.
Dim sum and milk tea in the morning. A mountain trail later. A ferry somewhere simply because you can. Cocktails above the city that evening.
Pack the beautiful shoes.
Pack the walking shoes too.
Hong Kong has plans for both.
And perhaps that is what makes it feel particularly suited to a honeymoon.
The best trips are rarely one thing, just as the best relationships and celebrations rarely are. There is room for glamour and silliness, adventure and stillness, something completely new and something that somehow feels familiar.
Hong Kong doesn’t ask you to decide which version of yourselves is going on honeymoon.
Bring them all.
When the Walls Became Walls Again
Eventually, dinner ended.
Toronto returned.
The projections disappeared and the walls became, rather disappointingly, walls again.
But something lingered.
The neon reflected in the wine glasses. Those garden tomatoes everyone was still talking about. The coastline that had appeared where skyscrapers stood only moments before. The stories exchanged between people who had arrived as strangers.
Hong Kong had entered the evening as an image many of us already recognized.
It left considerably bigger.
Not simply a skyline.
Not simply a city.
But beaches and mountains, family recipes and ferry rides, old traditions and new interpretations, loud nights and quiet mornings.
A world of possibilities, really.
And perhaps that is the best thing a travel experience can give you before you ever step onto a plane.
Not the feeling that you have seen a destination.
The feeling that you have only just begun.
Erin Sawala and Alexandra Hourigan of Parallel Events share a smile as they take in the vibrant sights and immersive surroundings of Hong Kong.
Your Hong Kong Story Starts Here
So whether you are planning the honeymoon, plotting an anniversary escape, returning to somewhere that already means something to you, reconnecting with family roots or simply suffering from that very particular condition known as we desperately need a trip, Hong Kong makes a compelling case.
Go for the skyline.
Stay for the shoreline.
Eat absolutely everything in between.
And leave a little room in the itinerary for the Hong Kong you did not know you were going to fall for.
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