Islington, Chinese Restaurant Guide

“Fantastic vegan Sichuan food” – “bursting with spices and tastes” – makes any one of this “deservedly popular” trio in Islington, Golders Green and Spitalfields Market (from the team behind omnivore Xi’an Impression) “a go-to place if you want to eat vegan with an Asian twist”. “Don’t go because it’s vegan, but because the food is just so good!”

As well as specialties from the island of Hainan, Cantonese, Hakka, and Min dishes add interest to the Southern Chinese menu of this Islington yearling: a first bricks ’n’ mortar project from restaurateur Sunny Wu. It’s not attention-grabbing in looks – perhaps why reporters have yet to vote on it – but in a February 2024 press review, The Evening Standard’s Jimi Famurewa was impressed, if “for no other reason than the fact that no one else is really doing it” (i.e. cuisine like this) – “flavours are both mellow and highly unexpected… embrace the experimental, tactile blur of slurped herbal broths and snaffled quail eggs, then Hainan House, to the uninitiated, can feel like learning a thrilling new culinary language”.