Update: King of Kings has announced that it will reopen in May following renovations. Iconic Fortitude Valley restaurant King of Kings has closed. The enormously popular yum cha eatery, which first opened in 1988, appears to have closed earlier this month. The business announced it would reopen in May – after renovations – in a Facebook post.

Initially the reasons for the closure had not been made public, but neighbouring restaurateur Nelson Chung, co-owner of Super Bowl Chinese Restaurant, said the area had suffered a precipitous decline in tourist traffic on the back of coronavirus fears and travel bans from China. “Their main business was dependent on Asian tourism,” Chung told Broadsheet when interviewed for a story on the coronavirus scare’s impact on Brisbane’s Chinese restaurant scene. Some of the area’s restaurants have suffered a 60 per cent drop in business in recent weeks. “Everyone wants their business to flourish. No one wants a bad week, because all the people working there will lose their jobs. [Restaurant owners] are so dependent on people eating [out].”