Lucy Wong’s backstory is not its own. It riffs on The World of Suzie Wong, a Fifties love story between a golden-hearted Hong Kong hooker and an expat Brit: she’s kept by other men and he fancies a nurse. Inevitably, er, they marry. When it opened, owner Eric Yu said the bar was a tribute to his mum which… I dunno. Is that sweet? Mother Ellis wouldn’t be too happy.
Still, Yu knows what he’s doing, having been at this game for 30-odd years. “He has a brilliant place called Opium,” I explained to a pal. “It’s tiny, up a million stairs, and pretty seedy.”
