London's largest Asian food hall, Bang Bang Oriental sits on the Edgware Road in Colindale and packs nearly 30 specialist food kiosks into 32,000 square feet, spanning everything from Cantonese roast duck and Korean bibimbap to Indian street food, Japanese ramen, Filipino grilled pork and Taiwanese bubble tea. The format is simple: grab a table, split up, and work your way around the stalls. Worth the trip out to Zone 4 for any serious fan of Asian food.
A long-standing and much-loved pan-Asian restaurant on Kensington High Street, Hare and Tortoise has been serving fresh handmade sushi, ramen, curry laksa, roast duck and noodle dishes since 1996. The bright, airy space is relaxed and unpretentious, the portions are generous and the prices are considerably kinder than most of its neighbours, making it one of the best value Asian restaurants in west London.
A small Japanese grocery store just off the Finchley Road that doubles as one of the best grab and go lunch spots in north west London. Alongside pantry staples and imported Japanese ingredients, the chilled counter is stacked daily with homemade karaage, okonomiyaki skewers, onigiri, bento boxes, sashimi and donburi bowls, all made fresh on site and sold at prices that feel genuinely remarkable for London. A beloved local institution.
The flagship London location of a bold new sushi concept from Dong Hyun Kim, the founder of Wasabi, Sushinoya occupies a corner site on Shaftesbury Avenue and sets out to do something genuinely different: omakase-quality sushi made entirely from whole fish, cut and prepared on site by chefs each day, in a grab and go format. Rare cuts including chutoro tuna belly, yellowtail and eel sit alongside hot bento and seasonal boxes, and the quality is a significant step above anything else in the grab and go sushi market.
One of the most exciting additions to Chinatown in recent years, YiQi on Lisle Street is a pan Asian restaurant with a largely Malaysian and Singaporean inspired menu, led by chef Stanley Lum Wah Cheok who previously cooked at Hakkasan and Yauatcha. The stylish room of rattan walls, dark wood and emerald green is a fitting backdrop for standout dishes which include the nyonya pandan chicken, charcoal grilled beef short ribs and whole grilled silver pomfret.
The name translates roughly as "wonderful hamburger steak" and sits directly opposite Shake Shack and Bleecker on Buckingham Palace Road, which tells you everything about the confidence of this Asian-inspired smash burger joint from Turkish-born chef Fatih Alkan. The short menu takes the American burger format and runs it through Japanese, Korean, Thai and Chinese flavours, from a kimchi burger with house-made kimchi to an Isan burger loaded with bird's eye chilli, all served in soft potato buns with double wagyu patties. One of the most genuinely original things to happen to London's burger scene in years.
A busy restaurant with sites in Soho and Covent Garden dedicated to Indo Chinese Hakka cooking, the fusion food that grew out of Kolkata's Chinese immigrant community. The name combines the Chinese surname Fatt with the Indian word pundit, and the food does the same, weaving Chinese techniques through Indian spices to genuinely exciting effect. The crackling spinach is the signature dish everyone orders and nobody forgets, and the steamed momos and Malabar monkfish curry are equally brilliant.
