Best Chinese Restaurants in London 2026 — Worth the Booking
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London's best Chinese cooking sits at A. Wong in Pimlico — two Michelin stars and the only Cantonese-leaning tasting menu in Britain priced like a Mayfair haute room. Runners-up: Hakkasan Mayfair, Mott 32, Park Chinois, Hutong at The Shard.
London does not have a Chinatown problem. It has a price-tag problem. Cantonese cooking in the city splits cleanly between the £15 dim-sum baskets of Lisle Street and the £200 tasting counters of Mayfair, and most of the rooms in the middle are confused about which one they are. The nine below are not confused.
Andrew Wong won London's second-ever Chinese Michelin star in 2017, kept it, then added a second in 2021 and still holds them in the 2025 guide — which means Britain's most ambitious Chinese cooking is happening four stops down the Victoria Line, not in Mayfair. The other eight rooms below earn their place by being honest about their register: Hakkasan and Park Chinois are evening-out destinations rather than serious eating, Bao is the £15 gua bao that Erchen Chang made famous in 2015, and Imperial Treasure Waterloo Place is the only restaurant in Britain that cooks Singaporean roast meats to Cantonese standards. Anything not on this list is the kind of Cantonese restaurant that uses MSG as a personality.
Nine Chinese Restaurants in London Worth Booking
Andrew Wong inherited the building from his parents in 2012, kept the green-tile facade, gutted everything inside it, and started cooking the regional Chinese tasting menu nobody else in Britain was willing to attempt. The dining room seats forty, the kitchen counter seats six, and the tasting menu travels through eight provinces of China in fourteen courses without ever feeling like a museum visit.
The signature is the 'Collections of China' tasting at £180 — a Xinjiang cumin-lamb skewer cooked over coals at the counter, Sichuan dumplings dressed in mala chilli oil that arrives hot enough to bloom the Sichuan peppercorn, then a Cantonese char siu glazed with kombu and aged for thirty-six hours. The wine pairing at £280 leans Riesling and Burgundy whites rather than the more obvious German Spätlese route, and the sommelier Veronica Cha will talk through it without performing.
Two Michelin stars (won 2021, retained in the 2025 guide), #40 in the World's 50 Best 2024, and a Three AA Rosettes rating that has held since 2018. The booking window opens ninety days out via Tock and the counter seats go in the first twenty minutes.
VerdictBritain's most serious Chinese kitchen, two stars in Pimlico, the only counter in London worth a ninety-day wait — book it.
Hakkasan opened on Hanway Place in 2001, won a Michelin star in 2003, lost it in 2018 after the Tao Group purchase, and reopened the Mayfair branch on Bruton Street in 2010 as the louder, later-into-the-night sibling. The dining room is the same dark lattice screens, the same red lacquer, the same DJ booth audible from 9pm onwards — and that is the point. This is a Cantonese kitchen attached to a nightclub, and judged on that brief it works.
Tong Chee Hwee built the original menu — the crispy duck salad with pomelo and pine nuts, the silver cod with champagne and Chinese honey, the jasmine tea-smoked Peking duck at £92 for the whole bird. Andrew Yeo runs the Mayfair pass now and the cooking has not slipped; the dim sum at lunch is still some of the best in central London. The Signature menu lands at £98 per person and is the right entry point if you are not ordering by the whole bird.
The wine list runs to 600 bins with a serious Burgundy section, and the cocktail program by group bar director Mike Burns leans toward shochu and rare Chinese spirits like Moutai. Reservations open 60 days out on Resy and the prime 8.30pm slots disappear in under five minutes for Friday and Saturday.
VerdictThe Mayfair Cantonese-nightclub hybrid done right, twenty-five years in, still the best Peking duck in W1 — book it for a group dinner that needs to go past midnight.
Mott 32 opened on Stratton Street in early 2023 as the Hong Kong group's first European site, taking the basement of the old Trader Vic's and turning it into the most ambitious new Chinese opening London had seen since A. Wong added its second star. The kitchen is led by Christopher Tang under group executive Lee Man-Sing — the same team that built the 2014 Hong Kong original at the Standard Chartered tower.
The 42-day apple-wood roasted Peking duck at £128 is the only one in London that requires a 48-hour pre-order, and the requirement is honest: the duck is hung, air-dried and basted in stages that cannot be compressed. The first service is the breast carved at the table over wood charcoal with caviar; the second is the leg minced into lettuce cups; the third is a clear consommé from the carcass. There is also a serious Iberico char siu at £42 that is closer to a Tokyo yakitori than a Mayfair starter.
The dining room runs to 130 covers underground, designed by Joyce Wang with brass and dark walnut. Reservations open on SevenRooms 30 days out — the duck slots between 7pm and 9pm go in the first hour for any Thursday or Friday.
VerdictThe 42-day Peking duck is the only one in London worth pre-ordering — reserve it two weeks out for a serious birthday or a closing-deal dinner.
Park Chinois is Alan Yau's last major London project — the man behind Wagamama, Hakkasan and Yauatcha opened it on Berkeley Street in 2015 and built it around a 1930s Shanghai supper-club brief. The ground floor is the Salon with the dim sum cart and the jazz quartet; the basement is the Club Chinois with the bigger tasting menu and the £200 wine pairings. The Salon is the room you want.
Lee Che Liang's kitchen produces the £45 black truffle xiao long bao that is genuinely worth the price — eight grams of Burgundy black truffle inside a soup dumpling with a pork-and-shrimp filling, served in a bamboo steamer with a slick of Sichuan vinegar. The tea-smoked Wagyu beef rib at £88 is the other order; the cut is M9+, the smoke comes from a blend of Pu-erh tea and longan wood, and the texture sits between brisket and prime rib.
The wine list runs to 900 bins under sommelier Tatiana Daniel and leans heavily Burgundy. Reservations open 60 days out on OpenTable and the Salon books faster than the basement. Dress code is enforced — jacket required for men after 7pm, which is rare for London Cantonese.
VerdictAlan Yau's last project, the truffle xiao long bao is the dish the rest of London copies — book the Salon for a birthday you want to remember.
Hutong sits on the 33rd floor of The Shard with the city's best Cantonese view — north-east across the river, the dome of St Paul's at eye level, the Gherkin and the Walkie-Talkie close enough to read the floor lights. The view is the brief, and the kitchen does not try to compete with it. Fan Yang's cooking is northern Chinese with Sichuan accents, and the menu is honest about being a high-altitude dim sum bar with serious mains.
The signature is the red lantern Iberico char siu at £36 — pork shoulder lacquered with maltose, fermented red bean curd and Chinese cinnamon, served hot from a bamboo basket lined with banana leaf. The soft-shell crab dressed in red Sichuan chilli oil at £42 is the other order; the chilli oil is house-made with Erjingtiao chillies and the heat sits at the Hunan-Sichuan border rather than the pure-numbing end. Skip the Peking duck — it is the only weak link on the menu and the kitchen knows it.
Reservations are easier than the Mayfair list — 30 days out via the website, and the early sitting at 5.30pm gets the sunset window in summer for £75 set lunch prices. The dress code is smart, not jacket-required, and the lift queue at 6pm is the worst part of the evening.
VerdictThe best view in London Cantonese, the char siu carries the room, the duck does not — try it once for a Friday-night sunset.
Yauatcha opened on Broadwick Street in 2004 — Alan Yau's second restaurant after Hakkasan — and won its Michelin star in 2005. It has held that star without interruption for twenty years, which makes it the longest-running starred Chinese kitchen in Britain. The ground floor is the patisserie and the macarons; the basement is the dim sum dining room with the blue glass fish tank along the back wall.
Stephanie Wong leads the dim sum kitchen now under Tong Chee Hwee's group oversight. The venison puff at £8 a piece is the dish to order — a hot-water pastry shell filled with five-spice venison shoulder, served two to a portion. The scallop shumai dressed with golden caviar at £14 is the other order. For pudding, the jasmine tea creme brûlée is the only Chinese-tea dessert in London that works at brûlée temperature without breaking.
Reservations open 28 days out on the website. The weekend dim sum brunch from 12pm to 4pm books two weeks ahead in spring; the weekday 6pm pre-theatre slot is the easiest entry point at around £60 per person before wine.
VerdictTwenty straight years of Michelin stars on Broadwick Street, the venison puff is the city's most consistent £8 — book it for a pre-theatre dinner that won't run late.
Imperial Treasure opened on Waterloo Place in 2021 as the Singapore group's first European outpost, and won its London Michelin star in the 2022 guide. The dining room is a 95-cover ground-floor space behind a pale stone facade two blocks from St James's Park — quieter than Mayfair, dressier than Soho, and built around the Hong Kong group's specialty: Cantonese-style roast meats cooked in the visible kitchen along the back wall.
Ko Chee Seng's Singapore-style roast goose at £88 is the dish to fly to London for. The bird is hung for two days, brushed with maltose and five-spice, then roasted in a 1.2-metre charcoal oven at the back of the kitchen — the skin shatters at the first cut, the fat is fully rendered, and the meat underneath stays at medium-rare temperature. The suckling pig at £148 for half is the other big order, ordered 48 hours ahead. The bird's nest soup at £58 is the only one in London that justifies the price.
The wine list runs to 1,400 bins under head sommelier Marcus Tan, and leans heavily on aged Burgundy. Reservations open 90 days out on the website — the roast-goose covers go first.
VerdictThe only Singapore-style roast goose in Britain at Michelin standard, hung two days, carved at the table — fly to London for it once.
Erchen Chang started Bao in 2013 as a Hackney market stall, opened the 30-seat Soho site on Lexington Street in 2015, and won the Bib Gourmand the same year. The original gua bao — slow-braised Cantonese pork belly, crushed peanut, fermented mustard greens, a single coriander leaf, all folded into a steamed Taiwanese milk bun — is still £8 a piece in 2026, which is a remarkable hold given the rest of Soho's food inflation.
The cooking is Taiwanese rather than Cantonese or Northern Chinese, which is the point — Bao is the city's most ambitious Taiwanese restaurant, not its most ambitious Chinese one. The classic gua bao is the order; pair it with the trotter nuggets at £6.50 and the daikon-and-pickle 'house plate' for £4. The Soho site does not take reservations after 6pm; arrive at 5.30pm Tuesday through Thursday and you will be seated within fifteen minutes.
The group now runs four London sites — Soho, Fitzrovia, Borough and Marylebone — and the cooking is consistent across all of them. Borough is the largest and the easiest to walk in to. Cash is not accepted at any branch.
VerdictErchen Chang's Taiwanese pork belly bun is the most consistent £8 in Soho since 2015 — try it once for a Tuesday solo dinner.
Dragon Castle sits on Walworth Road five minutes from Elephant & Castle station, in a 180-cover dining room that has not been redecorated since 2009 and does not need to be. Wai Sang Lo cooks Cantonese — properly Cantonese, the kind where the suckling pig is ordered 24 hours ahead and the kitchen cares whether you take soy or chilli first. The clientele is two thirds Cantonese-speaking on a Sunday lunchtime.
The suckling pig at £85 for half a bird is the order to plan a meal around. The skin is the standard for Hong Kong roast-meat counters but rarely reached in London — fully blistered, paper-thin, separates cleanly from the fat layer. The steamed scallops on the half-shell with minced garlic and glass vermicelli are the other order at £4.50 a piece. Dim sum runs Tuesday to Sunday from 11.30am to 5pm.
Reservations open 14 days out by phone — the website booking system has not worked since 2022 and the staff are aware of this. Sunday lunch books a week in advance for groups of six or more; weekdays usually walk in.
VerdictThe only south-of-the-river Cantonese kitchen that cooks suckling pig at Hong Kong standard — pencil it in for a Sunday lunch with a big group.
Who This Guide Isn't For
This is not a Chinatown guide. Lisle Street and Gerrard Street have their own logic — fast turnover, £15 plates, the kind of late-night roast pork and noodles that make sense at 11pm after a show. None of that is wrong, none of it is on this list. If you are looking for that, the right writeup is the Gerrard Street late-night roast meats roundup, not this one.
Skip Hakkasan Mayfair for a first date you want to actually hear. The room is built around the DJ and the conversation level after 9pm is the loudest in W1. Park Chinois Salon, Yauatcha Soho's basement, or A. Wong are the better calls for two people who came to talk.
Skip Mott 32 if you have not pre-ordered the duck. The rest of the menu is solid but no longer extraordinary; without the 42-day Peking duck the meal lands at £180 a head for a dinner you could have had at Hakkasan for £140. The duck is the brief.
How to Pick the Right Room for Your Evening
A. Wong is the answer for a once-a-year birthday or anniversary, ninety days out. Imperial Treasure Fine Chinese Cuisine for a serious business dinner. Mott 32 for the Peking duck event.
Hakkasan Mayfair for a group dinner that runs late, Park Chinois Salon for a date, Hutong for the view, Yauatcha Soho for pre-theatre or dim sum brunch.
Bao Soho for a solo Tuesday-night gua bao, Dragon Castle for a Sunday-lunch suckling pig with eight people. Both walk-in-friendly outside peak weekends.
A. Wong opens 90 days out via Tock — the counter goes in the first 20 minutes. Imperial Treasure also 90 days out, on the website. Hakkasan, Park Chinois and Mott 32 open 30 to 60 days out on Resy / OpenTable / SevenRooms respectively. Yauatcha, Hutong and Dragon Castle are 14 to 28 days out. Bao does not take reservations after 6pm.