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”.

2021 Review: In Chinatown’s shiny, new, Central Cross development, this “functional but bright and clean” 150-seater opened in spring 2019, and early days feedback says it’s a good, modern addition to the area. “My wife and I know Shanghai food from both Hong Kong and Shanghai – this is good, with generous portions at good-value prices”. “Staff, despite being rushed off their feet, were pleasant and helpful, though few spoke English”.

“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”.

An “interesting menu” – with “the spicing just right” – is offered at this “great concept”, serving the cuisine developed by the historic Hakka Chinese community in Kolkata. The only complaint relates to the “very cramped tables” at its two venues, in Soho and Covent Garden.

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”.

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”.