Soho, Chinese Restaurant Guide

“Silky-fine cheung fun, filled with sweet fresh prawns”… “dumplings wrapped in translucent skins”… “delicious venison puffs”… – “you can’t go back to Chinatown dim sum after a trip” to one of these “hip and happening”, Chinese-inspired haunts, whose “addictive bites keep reeling you in”. The “flash” Soho original, created by Alan Yau, “still feels fresh after all these years” – with its moody basement and lighter ground floor – while the Broadgate spin-off is much larger in scale, more conventionally glam, and with a big cocktail terrace overlooking Broadgate Circle. Any drawbacks? Service is “efficient” but “sometimes brusque”. Top Tips – Soho also serves tea, and has a line in “gorgeous, elegant patisserie”; EC2 does “exceptional-value weekend lunches”.

“Spice heaven!” – this “old favourite” is “worth a detour north of Shaftesbury Avenue” to “experience genuinely interesting and mouth-popping Sichuan specials” – so “be brave when you order”. The food-writer, China expert and consultant “Fuchsia Dunlop’s touch makes it a regional Chinese diamond in the Chinatown rough”.

This “nice take on typical Chinese dishes”, served “tapas-style in a gastropub” on Soho’s Berwick Street, is the creation of Asian restaurant maestro Alan Yau. Four years on, however – while it’s perfectly decently rated – there is little evidence that he has conjured another winner on the scale of his earlier hits, Wagamama and Hakkasan.

A “straightforward Chinatown classic”: this long-standing, “very authentic” destination provides a “good central location for inexpensive – and always reliable – dim sum” as well as roast meat.

“The service is passable and the ambience is poor” at this group in Chinatown and Bayswater – “but you only go for one thing: the barbecued/roast meat”, especially the “famous” and “perfect Cantonese roast duck and the char siu pork”. They might be “a bit too authentic these days”, but they’re still “hard to beat for Chinese food”.

“Go through the doors and instantly get barked at – how many? Then, an instruction is growled: ‘Upstairs!’” The ritual of a meal at this famous Chinatown veteran, has elements of self-conscious parody (you can actually buy a T-shirt saying ‘upstairs’), but remains relatively ‘real’: a loose pact between its infamously “rude” and dismissive staff and students, theatre-goers and hungry workers in search of cheap, Chinese chow. “You are unlikely to get any smiles as you find yourself at a shared table, in a crammed-in dining area with plates piled high with deliciously smelly food being slammed onto various tables – they want you to be decisive, eat, and get out as soon as possible” – but it’s “a fantastic filler”.