The Flying Tiger's food and service are excellent, but the military memorabilia steals the show. The place is as much museum as restaurant, with Tigers - themed pictures (and movies) on the walls and military relics artfully displayed in showcases and along the corridors.

The Tigers motif is amplified in the eye-catching olive-drab uniforms of the wait staff, and climaxes with the shark-mouthed P-40 that's suspended, nose-up and with propellor spinning, beneath the atrium skylight. It may be just a scale model, but it looks very real!

My father was a base engineer for General Chennault during WWII and liked Kunming very much. He must have visited this building in 1944 or 1945, so the display of memorabilia brought back some powerful memories for me.