FOOD & DRINK

Steffan Willis, FALCO

Author/ Being Neighbourly
15 June 2026

Steffan Willis is the owner of FALCO, a spanking new eatery that’s hit Wa Lane, a little lane off Hollywood Road that you probably haven’t been to. While Willis is the person behind the food ideas, he’s quick to credit Head Chef Kai Fung Lau as the one turning ideas into reality. Together, their combination of concept and direction and technical know-how in the kitchen look set to propel this locale to must-try neighbourhood relevance.

What do you like most about being in food?

Hospitality and hosting — the best bit is when the room, the food, the drinks and the team all come together and a guest is clearly enjoying themselves. That’s the whole point, and it makes the sleepless nights worth it. Everything we do feeds into that: we make the food in house, we take care over the drinks — but not for its own sake. It’s all about creating an atmosphere of care and attention. You can build a beautiful space, but if the service is cold or the food feels unloved, none of it matters. Even technically perfect food falls flat without that warmth.

Tell us about your food journey.

My Welsh grandmother taught me to cook as a child — garden vegetables, cakes, proper gravy. I’ve loved it ever since, though for years it was just a passion: I worked in finance in London, then as an economist in Hong Kong. Two years ago I took over a café in West Kowloon — a restaurant-management MBA on steroids — and got the bug properly. FALCO is the result: real food, real drinks, and a culture of experimentation and joy.

Were there early signs that food was your future?

For me it was always the craft of cooking and hosting more than the eating. In my twenties in London I was already sketching ideas — one was a butcher-slash-wine-bar with my uncle who’s a farmer. He once drove half a pig to my mum’s house and we spent the weekend butchering it and making sausages. I wasn’t really ready then to take the plunge. I ended up taking on my first restaurant when my wife was seven months pregnant instead, because one baby wasn’t quite hard enough.

Tell us about a great food experience you’ve had.

I’ve had incredible meals at fine dining restaurants, but the most memorable experiences are always the everyday ones — going to Lamma and getting a whole steamed fish covered in spring onions and ginger, a bowl of beef brisket wonton noodles for lunch, picking up a bao on the street. If I had to pick one key experience though, it would be a restaurant called Le Bindi in rural Tuscany. One table, sixteen people, and they just start bringing dishes. The warm rabbit pâté will stay with me forever — not fancy, not pretentious, just big plates handed around while you talk to the people next to you and drink good wine. The only thing that could have possibly improved that evening was if we’d been sitting outside.

What are your favourite ingredients to work with?

Spices. They’re the paint you cook with — a little bitter earthiness here, something to wake a dish up there. There’s a lot of gatekeeping around spices and “regional” ingredients, which I find frustrating. They’re just foods with characteristics you can play with. No mystery, no exclusivity, just flavour.

⁠What are the dishes you’re cooking at the moment?

Unfortunately, I’ve had a very little time to cook in the past few months, so I’m going to cheat and pick a few FALCO favourites: the anchovy toast (marinated anchovies, paper-thin cucumber, beetroot purée, whipped lemon butter), the whipped labneh with hot honey, nuts and mint, and our loaded open flatbreads. There’s a Michael Pollan line I love “eat real food, not too much, mostly plants” that sums up the idea behind them.

FALCO

5 Wa Lane, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong.