The only Chinese restaurant outside Asia to hold two Michelin stars, A. Wong on Wilton Road is chef Andrew Wong's extraordinary love letter to the full breadth of Chinese culinary history. By night the Collections of China tasting menu takes you through 30 dishes and 3,000 years of regional cooking in a single sitting, with standouts including the inside out xiao long bao filled with ginger vinegar foam and the iconic steamed duck yolk custard bun; at lunch, the dim sum menu is equally exceptional and considerably easier to get a table for.
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.
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.
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.
