Luk Man Hon is a man who wears many hats.
The Hong Kong-born 42-year-old defines himself as a vinyl dealer, DJ, photographer and poker player. But he is also an entrepreneur, as the pitmaster and owner of Uncle Hon’s BBQ, an Asian-style barbecue at the canalside cocktail bar All My Friends in Hackney Wick, East London.
There, he serves his take on Southern barbecue with a subtle Chinese twist. But before he turned to grilling meats, Hon was the mastermind behind Vinyl Pimp, a second-hand record store – and the UK’s only “vinyl hotel” – that has been a go-to for music lovers since 2007.
Born in Wan Chai, Hon moved to the UK with his family before Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. He studied business in Plymouth, and after ditching a potential career in sales, he turned his passion for records into a thriving business, focusing on dance, techno and trance music.
In 2022, he swapped the turntables for grills by chance after an amateur poker tournament in Las Vegas. The players at his table recommended visiting Austin, Texas while he was in the United States and checking out one of its top barbecue restaurants, InterStellar.
It was there that Hon met pitmaster and owner John Bates, who took him behind the scenes and showed him his set-up. That visit lit a fire in Hon and he stayed in touch with Bates, returning three months later to intern at InterStellar.
