Fitzrovia, Chinese Restaurant Guide

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.

“Excellent and authentic”, “traditional Chinese food that’s a million miles from what you’d get in Chinatown” can be found at this regional specialist in Fitzrovia from Hunanese chef JianRen Zhou. Critic Jay Rayner rated its Chongqing chicken the best he had ever tasted in a 2024 review.

“Inventive and high-quality Chinese cooking” finds favour for this high-end Cantonese and Hubei venture, near Goodge Street station, run by chef Yipeng Qian, formerly of Hakkasan, MiMi Mei Fair and Gouqi. It uses luxury ingredients including abalone, lobster and geoduck (a giant Pacific clam) and the only concern expressed in our diner feedback is that “while delicious, they may struggle with such expensive set menus for this area”. Thus, we’ve marked it optimistically (despite a stinker of a March 2025 review from The Times’s Giles Coren, who dismissed elements of his experience as ‘Mum’s gone to Iceland’).

2024 Review: “Please whatever you do, don’t dress up to dine here!” – “This is a tiny, cheap hole-in-the-wall” near Great Portland Street tube, serving “comfort noodles for Chinese students and others”: “magical broth that feels utterly authentic and packed with flavour (we absolutely wolfed ours down!)”. “Everyone gets a warm welcome” too! (The Times’s Giles Coren is also a fan – “it drew tears of nostalgia for a 1970s Shenyang childhood that I never had”).

“Fiercely hot and mouth-numbing noodles” (“effectively street food”) are the promise at this Asian duo, from Liu Qing and Charlene Liu, which showcases the xiaomian noodles of Chongqing, their hometown in southwest China. The original is in Soho’s Kingly Court, although it was its location in a Marylebone pub – The Jackalope – which inspired more reports this year: “the ambience is utterly unrefined”, “the flavours are powerful… to the extent that there is some masochism in eating here. But everyone should try, at least once!”