Visit Chinatown’s Chinese restaurants & Oriental shops – Decorated with dragons, lanterns and pagodas

Craig’s review… Special fried rice with stir-fry chicken pork balls, crispy duck and prawn crackers too, please, and some chop suey chow mien with oriental rice noodles plus two pieces of sesame prawn toast on a bun. And some tomato ketchup.

Photo: Craig Cross

That is an example of what I might say when I have a Chinese takeaway (damn… I forgot the spring rolls!) but have you ever eaten a real Chinese meal? I mean one that’s cooked in Chinatown? The Chinese empire only stretches to two streets in London and they’re themed like an oriental Disneyland: big terracotta pots with bonsai trees in them, stone pots with fir trees, carved wooden gateways and red paper lanterns strung across the street.

The thing that I like most about this place is that it always seems to be just on the cusp of opening. No matter what time of day you arrive, whether it’s eight o’clock in the morning or nine o’clock at night, everybody is still rushing around as if they’re trying to get ready. Metal shutters are always going up with a clack and a bang. Lorries are always reversing down the road whilst aproned waiters crowd around the back to offload the pallets of cabbages and tomatoes and heave big sacks of onions up onto their shoulders.

Photo: Craig Cross

If you dawdle for five minutes then you’ll get bricked in by giant flat bags of rice, cardboard boxes of bean sprouts and a pyramid pile of bin bags stacked up against the lamppost.

Chinese restaurants, takeaways and cocktail bars

A typical English cafe has a half-jar of mustard on a crumbling cork mat, whereas Chinese ones have fairy lights and a tropical fish tank by the door. I have a read of the menu in the misty window to see what they’re eating and there’s dim sum, roast duck and dumplings, huge hotpots on the table (big bowls of boiling water with a few skewers for the meat). There are a couple of fast-food joints as well but they’re not like our western ones. The Chinese version of Kentucky Fried Chicken has a string of dead chickens trussed up in the window.

Photo: Craig Cross

If you want a drink then look for a bouncer lounging around an empty door because that’s probably a speakeasy-style bar. He’ll look you up and down a few times, maybe give you a smile (probably not), and crack open the door about five inches so you can squeeze in sideways.

When you climb the stairs you’ll find yourself in a dimly-lit cocktail bar… the kind of bar where all the shelves are lit with mirrors and the only glasses they’ve got are tall triangle ones on long thin stems. There’s supposed to be a good one down Gerrard Street called Opium, and The Mulwray above the Blue Posts in Rupert Court.

Photo: Craig Cross

Oriental supermarkets and Asian food shops

I’m not sure how their supermarkets work because they don’t have any shelving inside, just a load of wooden pallets spread across the floor with rice sacks as big as dry concrete bags and huge army-sized drums of cooking oil.

I’m doing a quick count up of the shops and it seems to be 80% restaurants, 10% herbal quack doctors and 10% massage parlours all offering to loosen up your muscles for fifteen quid a pop. But I’m guessing they’re the kind of massages that hurt, with lots of karate chops and pummelling of fists involved.

Worth a visit? ★★☆Value for money? n/aGood for kids? ★☆☆Easy to get to? ★★★

I also recommend… If you enjoy this then try Leicester Square (you can walk it in less than 2 mins) and Piccadilly Circus (you can walk it in 4 mins). You might like to come back in January or February when all the paper lanterns are up to celebrate Chinese New Year

The author Craig Cross owns city-guide.london and has spent the last decade reviewing the capital’s landmarks, attractions and hotels. His guidebook London Squire is available from Amazon. This review was updated on 18th August 2023