Hungry diners come here to try hometown stir-fried beef or chopped pepper fish head, while waiters speaking Mandarin serve plates of hot dishes that are peppered with green and red peppers.

It was the opening night of Huijiaxiang, a well-known restaurant chain from mainland China, in Hong Kong, as it tries to break into the city’s fiercely competitive restaurant industry. Brand founder Huang Haiying greeted customers in a bright red suit while waiters handed out red envelopes stuffed with coupons.

It’s tough to open a restaurant in Hong Kong these days. Fewer people are dining out, and more restaurants have closed than opened this year. But restaurateurs in mainland China, which also face challenges, see an opportunity.

“Everyone has their own way of survival. Now we are trying to survive on the edge,” Ms. Huang said. “Let’s see who is more courageous and who will succeed.”

Huijiaxiang is one of more than a dozen Chinese restaurant chains that have opened in Hong Kong in recent months, encouraged by the influx of new customers from Hong Kong heading to the neighboring mainland city of Shenzhen for more choices.

But the restaurants have been met with some skepticism since arriving in Hong Kong, a long-autonomous Chinese territory that has come under tighter control from Beijing. To some in Hong Kong, the move is a sign that the city’s culture is slowly being replaced by the rest of China.

A few new restaurants have opened not far from Huijiaxiang, offering delicacies from three southern Chinese provinces: Guizhou rice noodles, Guangxi river snail noodles and Hunan stinky tofu.

These venues cater mainly to locals and the growing community of mainlanders, some of whom have come to make the city their home in the past decade.

“When I first came to Hong Kong, it was hard to find restaurants that served authentic mainland Chinese food,” said Karen Lam, a banker and current business student at the University of Hong Kong. On a recent evening, she had stir-fried beef at Huijiaoxiang.

“Chinese restaurants here are all based on the ‘local taste’ of Hong Kong,” said Ms Lam, who has lived in the city for six years.

Mainlanders’ complaints that Hong Kong food is too bland are now more jarring to locals as they grapple with the city’s changing identity.

Beijing imposed a sweeping crackdown on Hong Kong in 2019 after citywide pro-democracy protests broke out.National Security LawMany expatriates and Hong Kong locals have left the city.Public health measures(One of the strictest public health measures in the world) has exacerbated the outflow of people.

Now, as Hong Kong is drawn closer to China’s orbit, mainland China’s economic slowdown and property crisis are weighing on Hong Kong’s long-awaited recovery.

The fastest-growing group of immigrants are people from mainland China seeking better jobs on special government-provided visas, who are finding the city more welcoming than before the pandemic, when mainlanders were often met with hostility by Hong Kong residents.

“Hong Kong has become more tolerant of mainlanders,” said Zheng Huiwen, manager of the Hong Kong branch of Tai Er Pickled Fish, a Sichuan fish restaurant from the mainland. At the restaurant, waiters bring a dish by exclaiming in traditional Peking opera tones: “Here comes the delicious fish!”

Mr. Zheng, who moved to Hong Kong from neighboring Guangdong Province as a teenager and worked as a waiter in restaurants here in the summer, recalled that Hong Kong diners would be very rude to him once they heard his mainland accent.

The atmosphere is changing as Hong Kong residents increasingly travel across the border for dining and shopping.

Tai Er Pickled Fish is so popular among Hong Kong tourists visiting Shenzhen that it opened four branches in Hong Kong last December.

More than half of the newly built apartments next to Mr. Cheng’s store, which is located in a shopping mall on the site of the old Kai Tak Airport, were snapped up by mainland Chinese buyers in March, according to local news media.

At the new Xita Old Lady Grill, a restaurant from the mainland, franchise owner Jianqiao Zhang complained that mainland diners were mainly interested in trendy restaurants. He wanted to find a different clientele in a new market.

He soon discovered that many people shared the same idea.

“I came here and found, ‘There’s a mainland restaurant over here, and there’s another mainland restaurant over there,’ ” Mr. Zhang said enthusiastically.

For some local restaurants that are struggling to stay afloat, the mushrooming of new outlets is puzzling: in April, the number of restaurants that closed was almost twice the number of new restaurants that opened, according to OpenRice, a dining guide and consulting platform.

Huijiaxiang opened in May in the Shek Tong Tsui area, where many of the brightly colored restaurants that were once community mainstays have recently closed. One restaurant that served cheap noodles and milk tea is gone, as is another where retirees often gathered for morning tea and to catch up on the day’s news.

“The restaurant industry is tough,” said Roy Xie, a local restaurant owner who sells lunchtime meals once popular with office workers in Hong Kong’s Taikoo Shing business district. “There are fewer customers during lunch hours now. Those who do come in order only the most basic items.”

Fujing Qingxiang Noodle House is a long-established local Hong Kong restaurant. The chef of this restaurant stews beef brisket in the window. The restaurant’s manager Yang Xi (sound) said that there used to be customers who would patronize it every day.

“But then one day, they just disappeared and never came back,” he said.

Today, restaurants that offer cheap dishes tend to do better business. Many new restaurants in the mainland attract diners with deep discounts, coupons and membership club deals.

On a recent Thursday afternoon, Chester Kuang and Sonya Zheng ate large bowls of noodles at Yu Jian Xiao Mian, a fast-food chain from Chongqing known for its hot and sour noodles made from sweet potato flour.

“This is such a steal,” Mr. Kwong said, referring to Ms. Cheng’s hot and sour noodle combo, which cost 36 Hong Kong dollars and included a bowl of hot and sour noodle and a serving of fried chicken.

Both Ms. Cheng and Mr. Kwong, who are recent college graduates, expressed concerns that these mainland restaurants would replace their favorite local restaurants. “It’s good to have these places to choose from for Chinese food, but it’s a bit scary to think that one day they might replace all the dining we once had in Hong Kong,” Mr. Kwong said.

Others feel similarly and choose not to patronize mainland restaurants.

“I take every opportunity to help local restaurants,” said Audrey Chan, who grew up in mainland China but moved to Hong Kong as a student six years ago and identifies as a Hongkonger.

Fu King once counted residents of nearby middle-class Chai Wan neighborhood as its main source of income. But so many have moved away — many of them have left Hong Kong — that Fu King has had to find new customers.

Ms. Huang, who returned to Xiang, said she knew it would be difficult.

But she also said, “No matter how bad the economy is, people still have to eat.”