Hale Barns, Chinese Restaurant Guide

2023 Review: “A superior mainstream Chinese” – this large, modern Cantonese in the city centre is eighteen years old and fans say it “shows just how familiar dishes should be done”, and with “excellent service” too.

2022 Review: “Delicious, super-spicy” Sichuanese cooking sets the taste buds on fire at this “friendly” Chinatown operation, with offshoots near the university in Oxford Road, in Leeds and York. Top Tip: “the hot poached chicken is fantastic”.

“A real gem in the city”, Warren Yeung’s Chinese in the heart of Chinatown – the original home of its famous sibling Yang Sing, run by his cousin Harry – “remains the best” locally thanks to its “superb and authentic” dim sum, plus other “wonderful” Cantonese dishes (and it’s also sparkling after a recent refurb’). (With the ongoing closure of the Yang Sing itself – which shuttered in 2021, and whose website has disappeared – this is now the dynasty’s sole survivor in Chinatown).

2022 Review: “Busy”, huge and gaudy Cantonese that sits over the Wing Yip Oriental supermarket, where you can choose from over 300 dishes on the menu. It’s one of the few places left in town (in the country?) where dim sum still comes on trolleys.

2024 Review: Opened in August 2022 in a former Chinese takeaway/chip shop, this ‘authentic Hong Kong’ (their words) venue shot to local fame on the back of an April 2023 review from The Observer’s Jay Rayner, who enjoyed its “profoundly comforting” dishes, with the “textural joys” of both traditionally Asian “slippery foods” and plenty of deep-fried, crunchy ones (including “very good chicken wings”). Reports please!