In recent years, the area has evolved from offering mainly Cantonese food to serving cuisines from across East and Southeast Asia. To showcase this variety, this summer Chinatown London is launching a #JourneyThroughChinatown promotion.
At lunchtime, Speedboat Bar is full of Londoners and tourists both Asian and Western. They sip Singha beer and tuck into dishes such as sweetcorn fritters with sweet and sour dipping sauce, pickled mustard greens with Chinese sausage, minced beef with holy basil and crispy pork curry.
The sole dessert is a crispy pineapple pie inspired by those found in Thai 7-Elevens.
It really comes into its own in the evenings when the music is turned up, and there’s a late-night menu served between 11pm and 12.30am to go with the whisky sodas.
Another buzzy nightspot is Pochawa Grill on adjacent Wardour Street, with its neon lighting, K-pop and Korean barbecue fare. Across the road Jeff Tan, formerly a chef at modern Chinese restaurant Hakkasan, is behind Viet Food, which serves a modern interpretation of Vietnamese street food in a stylish, dark-wood setting.
On nearby Lisle Street, the elegantly designed YiQi Pan Asian Cuisine serves mainly Malaysian and Singaporean dishes, as well as food from Thailand and Indonesia.
Do not let the term pan-Asian put you off – chef Lum Wah Cheok, who also worked at Hakkasan as well as at Yauatcha, another contemporary Chinese restaurant, pulls off this cuisine with aplomb. Signature dishes include stir-fried clams, charcoal-grilled chicken wings, and whole fish in yuzu chilli spicy or assam sauce.
Another popular newcomer is Kung Fu Noodle on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Wardour Street. Before noon every day a queue forms outside this contemporary northwest Chinese restaurant for its hand-pulled noodle dishes – in particular the Lanzhou beef noodle soup.
Asian dessert restaurants have cropped up too, especially on Newport Court, a narrow lane that has been dubbed “Dessert Alley”. Stand-outs include Japanese patisserie Kova, with its exquisitely presented cakes, and Mamasons Dirty Ice Cream for ube bilog – milk bread rolls filled with Filipino purple yam ice cream.
Although the area is evolving, several Cantonese favourites remain. Next to the main Chinatown Gate on Wardour Street, the no-frills Café TPT serves dai pai dong – Hong Kong street stall – fare to a loyal following.
Around the corner on Gerrard Street, in the heart of Chinatown, are Dumplings’ Legend and Plum Valley, two long-standing and popular places for dim sum. A third, Tao Tao Ju, is still going strong on Lisle Street.
When I visit on a weekday, Chinese families are waiting patiently for the midday opening of Four Seasons on Gerrard Street, where the glistening roast ducks for which it is famous hang tantalisingly in the window.
A similar crowd gathers a few doors down outside Lotus Garden Cantonese restaurant, with its pagoda-style canopy and lions sitting guard.
Newer additions include The Eight on Shaftsbury Avenue, a contemporary take on a Hong Kong-style cafe, or cha chaan teng; Bun House on Lisle Street, which is a modern steamed bao restaurant; and Bubblewrap Dessert Shop on Wardour Street, which specialises in bubble waffles, a popular update of egg waffles which are cone-shaped and filled with ice cream and toppings.
The street signs are in both English and Chinese characters, and dotted among the restaurants you will find businesses including Asian supermarkets and beauty salons.
Look above the shop fronts and reminders of the area’s rich history are everywhere. To name just a few, at Wong Kei, once fondly known as “London’s rudest restaurant”, a heritage plaque reveals that a famed theatrical wigmaker lived there in the late 19th century.
New Loon Moon supermarket is on the site of the Turk’s Head Tavern, where Samuel Johnson founded The Literary Club in 1764. Opposite, underneath Leongs Legend Taiwanese restaurant, is where Ronnie Scott first opened his famous jazz club.
