Chinese restaurants in London
85 places
A. Wong
££££The only two-Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant in Europe, working through the regional cooking of the whole country across a tasting menu.
Dim sum at lunch is a different and far cheaper proposition than the evening tasting menu - the two services barely resemble each other.
Baba Tang
££Topped Time Out's dim sum ranking, with everything made in house - the cheung fun with peanut and XO sauce is the dish people go for.
Bang Bang Oriental Foodhall
£London's largest Asian food hall - more than twenty-five kiosks across Chinese, Malaysian, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese, built as the successor to the much-missed Oriental City that stood on this site.
Zone 4 on the Northern line, so it is a trip rather than a stop-off, and worth going hungry for. Cash-light but busy at weekends; the kiosks turn over quickly.
BaoziInn
££Northern Chinese street food tidied up for London, in a room done out in Communist-era poster kitsch.
Bar Shu
£££The restaurant that introduced London to real Sichuan cooking in 2006 - numbing peppercorn, chilli oil and dry-fried beans, at a time when the city thought Chinese food meant Cantonese.
On the corner of Frith Street and Shaftesbury Avenue, on the edge of Chinatown rather than in it. Dishes are marked for heat and the marking is honest.
Big Brother Hot Pot
££One of London's few double buffets - all-you-can-eat hot pot and all-you-can-eat grilled meat at the same table, on a Mongolian rather than Sichuan base.
Bun House
£Steamed buns from a counter rather than a dining room, at a price that undercuts everything around it.
Cafe TPT
£A Wardour Street cha chaan teng - Hong Kong cafe food, late hours, and none of the tourist pricing of the main drag.
Canton Blue
££££Inside The Peninsula, themed on a 19th-century trading ship - the most expensive Cantonese room in London and built to look it.
Chilli Cool
££Two shopfronts on the same street: stir-fries on one side, a separate hot pot room on the other, plus boboji - meat and vegetables on skewers, cooked in mala oil and priced by the stick.
Named by five domains, the most of any independent in the topic, and by every Chinese-language source in the corpus.
Chinatown Bakery
£Egg tarts and bolo bao made in the window on Newport Place - the queue is usually visible from the gate.
Chinese Tapas House
££Northern Chinese cooking served as small plates, which is a rarer format here than the Cantonese banquet.
Crystal China
££Dry hot pot, which is not hot pot at all in the broth sense - the ingredients are stir-fried in mala oil and arrive already cooked, so there is no simmering and no waiting.
Da Long Yi
£££Its signature broth is beef tallow, dried chillies, Sichuan peppercorns and more than twenty aromatics, and the Volcano Beef is marbled beef built into a cone over crushed ice with chilli oil poured down the middle.
Ordering is by tablet. Sauce station with printed recipe cards. Part of a group with more than 300 restaurants worldwide.
Dim Sum & Duck
££Dim sum served day and night rather than only until mid-afternoon, which almost nowhere else in London does.
Dim Sum Library
£££Dim sum in a bar-led room rather than a banquet hall, which makes it the one that works for an evening rather than a lunch.
Dragon Castle
££South London's proper dim sum hall - a full-size Cantonese banqueting room at Elephant and Castle, with trolley-era scale and none of the Chinatown mark-up.
Dim sum is served through the day rather than only at lunch, which is unusual. Large enough to take a group without booking far ahead.
Dragon Inn Club
£££The dearest broths in the corpus: a fish maw and chicken soup base alongside coconut chicken, beef tallow red soup and tomato, served from a dragon's-head pot.
Dream Xi'An
££Xi'an cooking - biang biang noodles, roujiamo, the food of the Silk Road's eastern end.
Dumplings' Legend
££A glass-walled kitchen on Gerrard Street where the xiao long bao are folded in front of the queue.
Etles Uyghur Restaurant
££Uyghur cooking from Xinjiang - hand-pulled laghman, cumin lamb skewers, a tradition almost nowhere else in London represents.
Facing Heaven
££Vegan Sichuan built on tofu and mushrooms rather than mock meat, from the chef behind the much-missed Mao Chow.
Feng Shang Princess
£££A three-tiered Chinese pagoda, painted red and hung with lanterns, moored on the Regent's Canal at Cumberland Basin - hand-built in the 1980s as the first floating restaurant of its kind in London.
Cantonese and Szechuan cooking; the boat is the reason to book rather than the kitchen, and reviews are mixed on the food. About ten minutes' walk from London Zoo's main entrance. Evenings only Monday to Friday; open from noon at weekends.
Feng Wei Shi Tang
££Copper pot upstairs, and the rest of the northern repertoire downstairs - grilled fish, rou jia mo, lamb spine. Clear water in a tall copper pot, and a mellow sesame dipping sauce.
Four Seasons
££Roast duck hanging in the window and a queue outside for it - the most-cited Chinese restaurant in London across every guide read.
Gold Mine
££Roast duck hanging in the window and carved to order - the Queensway institution people cross London for, and cheaper than Chinatown for the same thing.
Queues at peak times and no bookings for small tables. Duck sells out; go early evening rather than late.
Golden Phoenix
££A Chinatown Cantonese room that both Time Out and The Hotel Journal single out from a very crowded street.
Haidilao
£££The Sichuan chain that turned hot pot into theatre - an apron, a hair tie and a bag for your coat on arrival, a sauce bar with recipe cards, and noodles pulled at the table.
Its own booking page states that tables are always held back for walk-ins. Two London sites, Piccadilly Circus and The O2.
Haidilao
£££The quieter of the two London Haidilaos, inside The O2 next to Nike and Costa. Same aprons, sauce bar and table-pulled noodles as the Trocadero, with a fraction of the queue on a night with nothing on at the arena.
Restaurant opens 11.30am daily, kitchen from 11am. Walk-ins are taken by phone number - staff text you when the table is ready rather than making you wait at the door.
Hainan House
££Hainanese chicken rice cooked properly - poached chicken, rice cooked in the stock, three sauces - which almost nothing else in London attempts as its main event.
Hakkasan
££££The basement room on Hanway Place that made high-end Chinese food fashionable in London, and set the template every glossy Chinese dining room since has borrowed from.
Han Restaurant
££The beef tallow arrives as a moulded bear that melts into the broth, and there is a Hainanese coconut chicken pot for anyone who wants sweetness rather than heat. Crab pot, barbecue and Dongbei dishes alongside.
Happy Lamb Hot Pot
££Mongolian rather than Sichuan: a clear herbal bone broth simmered for six hours with goji berries, jujubes and ginseng, and paper-thin marbled lamb that needs no dipping sauce.
Founded by the original team behind Little Sheep. Two London branches, Holborn and Bayswater.
Hotto Potto
££A beef tallow broth, a barbecue list alongside the pot, and a menu that prints a recommended cooking time against each ingredient - the single most useful thing a beginner can be handed.
Publishes a GBP 20 solo hot pot set - broth, meat, vegetables and rice or noodles for one, which almost nowhere else offers. Dedicated halal menu. Karaoke rooms downstairs.
Hunan
££££No menu at all - you say what you dislike and dishes keep arriving until you stop them. Hunanese cooking, changing daily.
There is no a la carte. The kitchen decides, which is the whole proposition - say in advance if you have restrictions.
Imperial Treasure
££££The London arm of the Singapore group, doing Cantonese cooking at a level and price that assumes you know what you are ordering.
Jixiang Baozi
£A counter turning out baozi from bamboo steamers, sold to eat standing up rather than sat down.
Joy King Lau
££Four floors off Leicester Square doing trolley-era dim sum the old way, largely unchanged while the street around it turned over.
Kai Mayfair
££££Held a Michelin star for the best part of two decades on South Audley Street, cooking Chinese food for Mayfair rather than adapting Mayfair to it.
Kung Fu Burger
£Everything is built on a sourdough Chinese-style bun, drawing on street food from across East and South East Asia rather than one region.
Kung Fu Noodle
£Noodles pulled to order in the window - the cheapest proper cooked meal in Chinatown.
Laoma
££A student canteen in the best sense: all-you-can-eat hot pot, free soft drinks and no service charge, in a room that fills with people from the surrounding streets.
Little Sichuan
££A Finchley Road parade Sichuanese that regulars from Sichuan vouch for - the mala base is the one to order, and the stir-fry menu runs alongside it.
Mailinda
££Old Beijing copper pot and charcoal skewers in the same sitting, plus chive boxes and guo bao rou - a neighbourhood canteen for the Isle of Dogs rather than a destination.
Mandarin Kitchen
£££The lobster noodles are the reason - a whole lobster over ginger and spring onion noodles, and the dish most London Chinese restaurants are measured against.
Big round tables and lazy susans; built for groups rather than couples. Long-running and deliberately unmodernised.
Mao Master Hotpot Noodle
£Maocai rather than malatang: the same one-bowl idea, and the broths run classic spicy, chicken and fresh tomato. Lotus root, Chinese yam, enoki, tofu puffs and bean curd rolls hold up best.
Master Wei
££Hand-pulled biang biang noodles and Xi'an street food near Russell Square, from the team behind Xi'an Impression.
Mealtime Malatang
£Sliced lamb and beef, Chinese spam, tofu skin, potato, oyster mushrooms, kelp and greens, on a mala base that a Gansu food writer says is the only base worth having.
Min Jiang
££££Wood-fired Peking duck carved tableside on the tenth floor, looking over Kensington Gardens - the only Chinese room in London with that view.
Mr Wang Hot Pot
£Malatang rather than shared hot pot: take a basket from a chilled counter, load it with beef rolls, tripe, lotus root, fish balls and frozen tofu, and it is weighed, priced and cooked into one bowl for you.
Aim for 400 to 500 grams of ingredients per person - the rule of thumb published by Broadsheet. The milky beef bone broth is the one to have.
Murger Han
££Named after the murger - slow-cooked meat packed into a flatbread bun - and one of the cheapest serious lunches in the City if you know to order it.
Muyang Hot Pot & BBQ
££One pot per person rather than one for the table, which is the whole point if you want your own broth. Hand-made fish balls, black fungus, quail eggs, rice cake, and the offal end for those who want it.
Claims to be the first restaurant in London to serve individual mini hot pots.
Nan Hotpot
££Chongqing rather than generic Sichuan, with a half-and-half mushroom and tomato broth for people who want the format without the heat, and short rib rolls and prawn skewers on the order sheet.
The Infatuation says it runs to 3am - the latest-serving hot pot in Chinatown. HOURS NEED CONFIRMING against the venue's own site.
Ning's Fresh Beef Hotpot
££Grass-fed beef in a delicate soup base - the Cantonese-Teochew reading of hot pot, where the point is the meat and the broth is a poaching liquid rather than a sauce.
Niu Hot Pot
££Chaoshan beef, which means the broth stays out of the way and the menu is sorted by cut - sirloin, short rib, rump, omasum, ox aorta, hand-made beef balls. Charcoal skewers and a private karaoke room alongside.
Eight soup bases including a congee base served with two live crabs. A halal section on the menu.
Orient London
£££The smart end of Chinatown - several floors on Wardour Street where the room is doing as much work as the trolley.
Park Chinois
££££A 1930s Shanghai supper club recreated on Berkeley Street, with live music downstairs and cabaret rather than a quiet dinner.
Pearl Liang
£££An unexpectedly large basement dining room behind Paddington station, routinely rated above the Chinatown equivalents by people who eat a lot of Cantonese food.
Five set menus, built for a table that wants to share rather than order individually.
Plum Valley
£££A family-run Gerrard Street room in a black-fronted building, doing award-winning dim sum in a smarter setting than most of Chinatown.
Pot Pot Malatang
£A basket, a chilled counter and a set of scales, on the Newport Court side of Chinatown - the cheapest way into the format for one person.
Real Beijing
££A charcoal-fired copper pot with a chimney up the middle, a preserved cabbage broth and paper-thin lamb that cooks in seconds - instant-boiled lamb, the northern format, eaten with sesame sauce rather than chilli oil.
The clearest example in Chinatown of a tradition that has nothing to do with Sichuan.
Royal China
£££A black-and-gold banquet hall on Baker Street where weekend dim sum runs at the volume of an airport terminal, and the queue is part of it.
No bookings at weekend lunch - the busiest dim sum service in London and it moves fast.
Shan Shui Jian
££Yang xie zi - lamb spine stewed to falling apart, eaten with your hands, and the pot then topped up and used to cook everything else. Grilled fish and chicken stewed with mushrooms alongside.
A branch of a well-known Chinese lamb-spine chain; the owner stews the spines to his own recipe. Not to be confused with Shan Shui Social, a separate modern Chinese restaurant.
Shan Shui Social
£££Cantonese and Sichuan cooking in a room styled on 1920s Shanghai, a minute from Victoria station - from Ellen Chew's Chew on This group.
Shanghai Me
££££Lacquered wood and 1930s glamour twenty-eight floors above Park Lane, looking down the length of Hyde Park.
Shu La La
££A dry spicy hot pot in scarlet oil, heavy on Sichuan peppercorn - the numbing end of the format rather than the soupy end.
Shu Xiang Ge
£££The jiugongge, or nine-grid pot: one broth divided into nine compartments so tripe, aorta and duck intestine each cook in the grid that suits them. A yuanyang split pot is the way out for anyone who cannot take the mala.
Claims to be London's first dedicated Sichuan hot pot restaurant. Moved from New Oxford Street to Gerrard Street; a White City branch is also named in the 2023 poll.
Shujie Hotpot
££Duck intestine, pork brain and beef aorta on a broth its regulars describe as the most Sichuanese in London. A plain room that you leave smelling of - regulars say wear old clothes.
Third in Red Scarf's 2023 UK readers' poll once scoped to London.
Silk Road
£Xinjiang cooking where only three items on the whole menu cost more than £8 - cumin, chilli and hand-cut noodles rather than anything Cantonese.
Simmer Huang
££A simmer pot rather than a hot pot: the ingredients arrive already stacked in the pan and cook down dry, and once you have eaten the top layer the staff pour broth in and it becomes a hot pot for the second half.
Halal. The two-stage format is unusual enough that first-timers should expect the pot to change halfway through.
Super Three
££All-you-can-eat Sichuan hot pot on a spicy butter base with a Korean charcoal grill on the same table, so a group that cannot agree does not have to.
One of two long-standing hot pot restaurants a few doors apart on East India Dock Road; Han Restaurant is the other.
Tao Tao Ju
£££Towering bamboo baskets of steamed and grilled dim sum, made fresh on site each day - the refined end of Lisle Street.
Tattu London
££££Contemporary Cantonese served under a cherry blossom canopy on the sixth floor of the Outernet, laid out as four rooms around an inner courtyard.
The Cherry Blossom dessert - a handmade chocolate tree that fogs when water is poured around it - is what most people book for. Sharing menu around 125 pounds a head.
Teo Hot Pot
£££Built entirely on beef: hand-cut cuts cooked seconds at a time in a light broth, the Chaoshan way, where a mala pot would drown what you are paying for.
The Duck and Rice
£££Alan Yau put a Chinese kitchen inside a Berwick Street pub - copper tanks downstairs, dining room above. The format has no real equivalent.
The Eight
££A cha chaan teng - the Hong Kong cafe format, where condensed-milk toast and macaroni soup sit on the same menu as rice plates.
Tian Fu
££Buffet or a la carte, with the offal end of the menu taken seriously - intestine, tripe, blood tofu - and a Sichuan stir-fry list that regulars rate as highly as the pot.
Head chef Zhang Xiaozhong. NOTE: Hotto Potto's own site claims the same chef. Do not print the attribution for either until it is resolved.
Tofu Vegan
££Chinese cooking done entirely without meat, and the strongest name on every vegan list in London - three of the four independent guides we read put it top. Aubergine in garlic sauce and the mock-meat dishes are what the queues are for.
Books out well ahead on Upper Street; there are further sites including Spitalfields and Marylebone. Not a substitution menu - most dishes are traditionally vegetable-based Chinese cooking rather than meat imitations.
Water House Restaurant
££Buffet hot pot with broths most places do not offer - old duck, old chicken and mutton alongside the usual mala and clear - plus chuanchuan skewers and a Hunanese menu.
Wong Kei
£A Wardour Street institution over several floors, famous for decades for brusque service and prices nothing central can match.
Cash was the rule for years and the service style is part of the legend. Fast, loud, and not a place to linger.
Xi'an Impression
££A small room opposite the Emirates doing the chewy, chilli-oil-heavy cooking of Shaanxi - the liangpi cold noodles are the reason people cross London for it.
No bookings, and the room is tiny - go off-peak or expect to wait.
Xiong Qi Hot Pot
££A group option a minute from Leicester Square, with suggested cooking times posted on the wall and staff who will tell a beginner what goes in when.
Sixth in Red Scarf's 2023 UK readers' poll, and the only London placing in that poll outside the four best-known names.
Yangguofu Malatang
£Over a hundred things to put in the basket - sliced meat, fish, tofu, ramen noodles, mini youtiao - then a broth, condiments and a dipping sauce. The herbal beef bone broth is creamy, lightly spiced and not oily.
Opened in the old Wing Wing site in summer 2025. Part of a group with over 7,000 restaurants worldwide; the only other UK branch is in Hammersmith.
Yauatcha
£££All-day dim sum with a patisserie counter downstairs, from the Hakkasan founder - it held a star for fourteen years and still cooks like it.
Yi-Ban
££Dim sum over the water at the Royal Docks, trading since 2003 and almost entirely unknown to central London.