Covent Garden , Chinese Restaurant Guide

2023 Review: This modern pan-Asian in Covent Garden – an import from NYC – offers “playful dim sum”, alongside other “cut-above” dishes. There are “relaxed long tables for groups or cosy red-checked spots for two diners”, and the atmosphere is set by the “fun 90s playlist and friendly team”.

2024 Review: “Fresh and very tasty dim sum” ensures that this 30-year-old Cantonese over three storeys on the edge of Chinatown “soon fills up with regulars”. “It may be a blessing that the ambience is not exactly chic – it keeps the tourists away”.

2023 Review: “Top egg yolk buns” are a big draw at China-born architect Z He and chef Alex Peffly’s well-known Chinatown pit stop, which provides an “excellent bustling ambience and wonderful heart-filling food”.

The “excellent”, “very flavourful” dishes at this duo in Soho and Covent Garden provide an “interesting and novel” answer to the question: “what is Indian food?” – showcasing, as they do, the distinctive Indo-Chinese cuisine developed by Hakka Chinese immigrants in Kolkata.

“Great northeastern Chinese cooking and dumplings!” are reported at this trio of pitstops originally in Colindale’s Bang Bang oriental food hall, and now with standalone locations in Covent Garden and more recently near Liverpool Street. They are the work of 27-year old Wenjun Xiang, and inspired by her upbringing in Dalian, China. “Much nicer than Din Thai Fung and A LOT cheaper!”

Below the UK’s biggest casino (so over-18s only), this new basement Chinese venue sits on the fringe of Chinatown. It’s in partnership with Four Seasons, a veteran of the area known for excellent duck, which – in particular – is “spot on” here. In other respects, reports suggest the menu (quite short by the rambling standards of the area) is “well-executed if not overly exciting”. “Those who mourn Y-ming [a nearby old-timer that closed two years ago] will love it here, as although the atmosphere is very different, it’s so lovely to see William again!” (who was maître d’ at Y-ming for over 25 years). Top Tip – “it is open late, which post-Brexit is a real plus given that most kitchens now are closing earlier”.

Following the family tradition, Amy Poon opens her first permanent restaurant at Somerset House from autumn 2025 – 50 years after her parents launched their famous Chinatown venue. Billed as an ‘evolution’ of the family’s cuisine, the menu showcases Amy’s signature claypot rice along with wind-dried meats made to her grandfather’s traditional recipe.

2023 Review: In the late 1990s, Jonathan Meades in the Times regularly hailed the Harbour City – a previous Cantonese occupant of this site on Chinatown’s main drag – as London’s top choice for dim sum. Now this latest incumbent is receiving similar treatment on the back of an Eater article hailing it as “the trendiest restaurant in central London”. According to The Observer’s Jay Rayner, the new “very different” offering is “the grand, jumpy, thrilling, chilli and numbing peppercorn hullabaloo that those of us addicted to the Sichuan repertoire just adore”.

In Old Compton Street just off Charing Cross Road, this offshoot of nearby Kung Fu Noodle specialises in biang biang noodles with generous toppings and quickly became something of an online fave rave. In her November 2024 review, the Guardian’s Grace Dent endured long queues, military-style service, and little time to savour the ‘delicious’ dishes (the braised chicken was “a dream… I think of it often”) but even she notes “there are equally wonderful noodles available just streets away” – the limited feedback in our annual diners’ poll errs more to the latter view, dubbing results “average all round”.