The Chinese Room Taj Swarna

The Verdict

The Chinese Room is Taj Swarna's sibling restaurant to Grand Trunk — the Chinese specialist on the hotel's ground floor, facing the internal courtyard. It is, by consensus among Amritsar's food-writing community and the Taj's own senior culinary staff, the best Chinese restaurant in Punjab.

The kitchen runs two parallel programmes. The Cantonese section handles dim sum during daily afternoon service (noon to 3pm) with a dedicated steam kitchen, and a short but serious roast-meats programme (Peking duck, char siu, crispy-skin pork belly). The Sichuan section takes the mala register seriously — the dan dan noodles, the mapo tofu, and the chilli chicken are properly spiced rather than the Indian-Chinese compromise that dominates the rest of the city.

The dining room is divided into an indoor main space and a smaller private dining room (the Zhu Room) that holds ten and has been, in practice, one of the city's preferred closed-door business-dinner settings for the past five years. Dinner with a cocktail runs ₹3,800 per person. The sake and Chinese-wine list is short but selected with real care; the rice wine (Shaoxing) programme is particularly good.

Why it works for Close a Deal

For closing a deal in Amritsar — particularly with a counterpart who has eaten at Taj Chambers in other cities and will recognise the group's Chinese-programme standard — the Chinese Room's private dining is the correct setting. The cuisine is universally legible. The pacing is unhurried. And the hotel's discretion is reliable in a city where the independent restaurant scene does not yet match the Taj's institutional standards.

Also in Amritsar

For diners who have experienced The Chinese Room, the natural companion evenings are The Bagh, Grand Trunk, Makhan Fish & Chicken Corner — each on a different register of the city's dining culture. See the full Amritsar directory for our complete occasion-ranked list, and the Close a Deal occasion page for comparable tables in other cities.