The 29th-floor penthouse restaurant at Hotel LKF feels like a Hong Kong power couple's living room, with velvety couches, lacquered low-slung tables, and plenty of enviable artifacts. You can grab drinks on an outdoor deck that draws fashionable sorts willing to let the South China winds blow through their just-coiffed manes. The intimate rooms make it ideal for drinking with small groups of friends. The generous selection of Champagnes and fine wines plus cigars and snacks creates a VIP ambience; its location near Central makes it a popular spot for businesspeople who want to keep the conversation going after office hours. The club also attracts Lan Kwai Fong–bound revelers seeking a sophisticated start before venturing into that neighborhood's sweaty scene.

Open nightly 6:30 to 10:30 pm.

It serves a tasty dim sum for lunch, but Dragon-I is better known as one of the city's plushest nightspots. Its rich red walls, banquettes, and dragon-festooned lanterns are courtesy of Parisian design queen India Mahdavi (she did Townhouse on South Beach and La Condesa in Mexico City). Despite being a near antique (it opened in 2002, forever ago in nightclub years), it was designated Club of the Year by the South China Morning Post in January 2006. The crowd tends toward hip, mojito-sipping thirtysomethings, who sway to the beats spun by European and Asian DJs.

Closed Sundays.

Set above the historic Yung Kee Restaurant—the stomping ground of early-20th-century Chinese moguls—this members-only club is where the city's young and fabulous congregate. The space includes three elegant, low-lit salons (Red, Blue, and Golden), private dining rooms, a screening room, and an intimate lounge. Apart from the exclusivity, what makes Kee notable is its impressive design and art collection: The walls are hung with canvases from Picasso, Jean Metzinger, and Konstantine Bessmertny; club members can plant their derrières on furniture by Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Philippe Starck. Nonmembers looking for a dim sum lunch or after-dinner cosmo will run into a strict door policy, but concierges at select hotels (including the Peninsula, Jia, and Grand Hyatt—see Hotels) can get you the keys to Kee.

The top three floors of the former Woo Cheong Pawn Shop, a four-story complex dating back to 1888, recently got a new lease on life as a colonial-chic gastropub and lounge. Salvaged building materials like wood panels from a Shenzhen shipyard and reproduction Chinese grill gates pay tribute to the building's previous incarnation. Skyscrapers illuminate the outdoor ambience on the spacious verandas and roof garden. Low-slung vintage chaises create a homey groove indoors, where imported ales and fruity cocktails appease the after-work crowd who stay on for Anglo comfort food items like roast bone marrow with horseradish cream, steak and kidney pudding, and of course, fish and chips with mushy peas.

Open Mondays through Fridays 11 am to 2 am, Saturdays and Sundays 11 am to 11 pm.

An open-air lounge with pale wood and all-weather Dedon furniture, Top Deck is (surprise!) the top deck at Jumbo, a floating Chinese restaurant near Stanley Market that's reached via a two-minute launch ride. With its backdrop of private yachts, elegant shorefront houses, and traditional Chinese boats, Top Deck is best for drinks at sunset, but there's also an elaborate Pan-Asian dinner menu and a fancy Sunday brunch. As the campy location suggests, it's a tourist magnet, but fun nevertheless.

Closed Mondays.

Lan Kwai Fong, Central's entertainment district, is chockablock with clubs and night owls—but the sprawling, subterranean Volar sets itself apart from the riffraff with a strict (some say too strict) door policy. Each weekend, hundreds of models and pop stars—and the mere mortals who dress like them—mingle on the large dance floor and in the white and silver circular lounge to a New York–style soundtrack of hip-hop, house, and soul. The Martini Royale signature drink of vodka, gin, and champagne is a Hong Kong institution.

Closed Sundays.