Yeung Koon-yat first opened the Forum in 1974 with business partners, though the restaurant was not officially registered until 1977. The early years were hard. The partners left, one by one, until Yeung was the sole owner. The menu was ordinary — comfort food, the kind served at hundreds of other Cantonese restaurants. Nothing made the Forum stand out.

Yeung's response to this situation was unusual. Rather than broaden the menu or cut prices, he narrowed his focus to a single ingredient: abalone. He studied the shellfish obsessively, learning preparation techniques from Japanese practitioners who had centuries of expertise with the dried variety. He soaked and dried whole pieces for a day, rehydrating Japanese dried abalone sourced from northern Japan, experimenting with heat — charcoal at first, then gas — until the texture and flavor met his standard. It took years. It paid off.

Word of Yeung's abalone spread through the circles that could afford it — businessmen, government officials, the Hong Kong elite. Positive reviews accumulated. Then, in 1984, Yeung served abalone to Deng Xiaoping. The occasion elevated the dish from local delicacy to something with a different kind of prestige. The politician, according to the account that has passed into Forum lore, said it was the best abalone he had ever eaten.

The story did what good culinary stories do: it traveled. The Forum became a destination for people who wanted to eat the same dish that had been served to one of the most powerful figures in 20th-century China. Yeung had found his signature, and it had found him an audience that extended well beyond Causeway Bay.

The Michelin Guide launched its Hong Kong and Macau edition in 2009. In the inaugural edition, the Forum received one star. Recognition built from there: the second star came in 2018, the third in 2020. Three Michelin stars is the guide's highest designation — a rating that, in practice, makes a restaurant a global destination and drives reservations from diners who plan international itineraries around specific meals.

Yeung's signature dish, Ah Yat's abalone (named using his nickname), is the Forum's centerpiece. The preparation has not fundamentally changed since Yeung developed it: Japanese dried abalone from northern Japan, rehydrated over a full day, slow-cooked by a method that Yeung refined over decades. The technique is simple to describe and difficult to execute. That gap is where the three stars live.

For years the Forum operated at 485 Lockhart Road in Causeway Bay. In January 2014 it moved to the first floor of nearby Sino Plaza, at 255–257 Gloucester Road, after its previous site was rented to Tsui Wah Restaurant for HK$1.22 million per month — a 70% increase over what the Forum had been paying, and a sum that made staying impractical.

The same year brought a trademark dispute: the Forum sued Fulum Group in April 2014, arguing that their chain's name infringed on the Forum's because the two names sound similar and are written with the same Chinese characters. By July 2014, a coexistence agreement had been reached. The matter illustrated how tightly Yeung had tied the Forum's identity to its name — and how seriously he took anything that might dilute it.

Yeung Koon-yat died on 31 July 2023 at the age of 90, following an undisclosed illness. The Forum announced his death on social media. He had built a restaurant that began with almost nothing — struggling finances, departing partners, no clear identity — and turned a single ingredient into a career, a reputation, and eventually a culinary legacy recognized by the world's most authoritative restaurant guide.

The story of the Forum is inseparable from the story of its founder: the decision to specialize, the years of study, the patience required to perfect something genuinely difficult. Abalone is not a forgiving ingredient. It demands time, technique, and a cook who refuses to settle for close enough. Yeung was that cook for fifty years.