• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
• /
• v.16 no.6
• /
• pp.152-160
• /
• 2007

The purpose of this study is to compare conditions of Korean Restaurants in Hong Kong with those of Thai ones, which have already succeeded in globalization, by investigating and analyzing the characteristics of the two parties in Hong Kong, a world-wide international city. For these purposes, we selected 10 Korean restaurants & 10 Thai restaurants in Hong Kong, and visited the selected restaurants during the period from 2007.7.9 to 2007.7.14, to examine indoor spaces and food-related elements were recorded in detail, photographed and analyzed. The results of study is as follows ; we have first found that Korean restaurants did not show any humane properties linked to restaurant concepts and indoor space, did link Korean images through their trade names, and showed decorative culture based on traditional house and dietary-life cultural properties based on traditional Korean Bansang table setting at large. On the other hand, 4 (22.5%) out of the entire cases in Thai restaurants showed religious characteristics with strong Buddhist colors revealed, and all cases showed traditional Thai food cultures, from which we could find out dietary-life cultural properties. Second, whereas there were one case of Korean restaurants in which tradition was main and modernity was assistant, five cases in which tradition and modernity were paralleled in value, and two cases in which modernity was main and tradition was assistant, Thai restaurants had one case where tradition was main and modernity was associative, four cases in which tradition and modernity were paralleled in value, and four cases where modernity was main and tradition was assistant. This means that the Thai restaurants did not insist only on tradition, but showed efforts to transmit luxurious and refined Thai images to people from the world. Third, whereas Korean restaurants had to do with all kinds of menu, were equipped with brazierson their tables uniformly, and showed any differences because they did not use different tableware in accordance with foods, Thai restaurants divided the dinner into the hors d'oeuvre, the main, and the dessert or systemized menu structure by categories in accordance with cooking styles, and tableware selection in accordance with menus, table setting, food materials, and food styling using flowers were consistently expressed.