Hong Kong has proudly welcomed a genuine hip American import to its already cosmopolitan dining menu. Fatty Crab, the first outlet of the award winning New York brand to venture abroad to foreign shores has scuttled off the boat and dug itself a dark and dangerous looking nook in the Central district.

Candace Campos of local design firm ID was the inspiration behind the Fatty Crab interior, found at the bottom of a wonderfully seedy flight of urbanised steps. Their graffiti and bomb-site plaster and brickwork sets you up perfectly for the smoothly delivered punch from the cocktail bar that hits the guests straight up through the door. The patent black barstools reflecting the piercing yet spare lights are a particular success in this atmospheric aperitif. Next is a halfway house area of booths between the bar and the dining room, offering the best of both worlds, and then the dining room proper, with carefully peeled flyposters on bar concrete. The emerging trend for covering walls with pornography, that seems to be on the rise in Asia, is here too – as are the faux flyposting-distressed walls – cynics may cry that it’s an urban try-hard too far, but when you’ve got a face full of crab? Who cares.