Chinatown

A Hot Dinners exclusive

He's the comedian who roasted both Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver for their ramen and egg fried rice dishes, respectively. Now Nigel Ng, who's better known by his comedy alter ego Uncle Roger, is preparing to put his money where his mouth is. This spring, he's opening his first UK restaurant in London.

Kawan by Uncle Roger is going to be a team effort between Nigel, restaurateur Keng Yew (who's behind London openings like YiQi and The Eight) and chef Daren Liew (Duddell's and the Hakkasan Group).

Given that Uncle Roger rose to fame

Nigel Ng, better known as Uncle Roger, talks to us about Kawan, his first London restaurant opening in Chinatown

We're always going to be interested in the arrival of a hot new noodle restaurant. But the one being unveiled in Chinatown next month sounds like it's really bringing something new to the table.

San Hao is the latest opening from the restaurant team behind YiQi, The Eight and Dozo. They're describing the place as a "refined noodle and fried dumpling restaurant". What's refined about it? Well, that'll be down to the strong emphasis on the quality of the produce, which is going to use the best of local and sustainable British ingredients.

The restaurant is taking over a

Sushinoya are going big in London. The first outpost of this new high end grab-and-go sushi spot opened in King's Cross and while we still have to wait for them to open in Moorgate, their flagship store is opening imminently in Chinatown. 

As with their first opening, all the sushi is made on-site daily, sourced from whole fish. This branch of Sushinoya will have a

Hot pot restaurants are ten a penny in London but the arrival of another new one in the centre of town has got fans rather excited. Yangguofu Malatang is a beast of a restaurant chain from China with over 7000 restaurants all over the world. Up till now if you wanted to try their food in the UK you had to head on over to Hammersmith, but a few weeks ago they unveiled their first restaurant in central

Central London is firmly in the grip of a noodle craze - the queues outside Noodle Inn aren't getting any shorter and there's the new Noodle & Beer in Chinatown too. Now, here's news of a third hot new noodle restaurant coming to the area. Songhelou is a Chinese restaurant that has real history, having first opened in Suzhou back in 1737.

The dish to have features their famous Suzhou-style noodles. Think slim noodles

7/3/25 - updated with the opening date

Noodle Inn may be the place everyone's currently queueing for, but it might soon have some competition coming its way. Noodle & Beer first opened in Spitalfields back in 2020 but it's been such a success that the owner is now opening a second restaurant, this time in the heart of Chinatown.

If you haven't tried the original in East London, then the clue to what

David Thompson, once best known for Nahm restaurant, is back in London with a more casual take on Thai food. We wend down to try out Long Chim.  

Three restaurants in three years - restaurateurs Kevin Cheong and Keng Yew Leong have been busy building their Chinatown empire. In 2022 they opened The Eight - a Hong Kong-style cafe. At the beginning of this year, ...

The latest restaurant to hit Chinatown is Yiqi, billed as a Pan-Asian restaurant with dishes from all over West and Southeast Asia. In charge of the kitchen is Chef Lum Wah Cheok who comes via Hakkasan and Yauatcha making this a potentially very interesting opening. 

The menu looks intriguing too. A taste of it includes fried cordyceps flower salad,

It's all change for the Barshu group who have been tinkering around with what restaurant to put in their Little Newport Street spot for a while. Having started life as Baiwei and then Dot Line Noodles, they've now gone into partnership with Chef Ming who used to run the Rocking Horse restaurant in Birmingham to open Eight Hundred Flavours.

The menu is inspired by the chef's childhood growing up on a farm in the

6/6/23 - updated with the opening date

London's Chinatown has a lot of hot pot and DIY barbecue restaurants, but the owners of incoming restaurant High Yaki are hoping that they're bringing something a little new to the table. It's a barbecue restaurant, where you grill your own food at your table, but the presentation is going to be a little different.

The restaurant will offer a range of beef cuts -

Updated 19/12/22 with imagery

You might have your favourite restaurant in London’s Chinatown, or are even happily attempting to work your way through them all, but we have a new one for your list and it’s a Korean BBQ concept.

Called Pochawa Grill, the name is inspired by ‘Pocha’, a shortened version of Pojangmacha, which is the term for street food

For the past couple of years, chef Fan Yi's Japanese industrial chic kitchen concept Oita has been operating out of the Green Rooms hotel in Wood Green. The Chinese chef decided to go down the Japanese route with his first pop-up after spotting a gap in the market in the area, having lived there for over a decade. Clearly, he was on to something as what was originally planned as a pop-up is now the hotel's

It's hard taking your first step up the restaurant ladder, doubly so if you're looking to open anywhere in Zone 1. Which is why Chinatown has just launched a pop-up space that's all about giving fledgling food businesses a leg up.

They've carved out a spot right in the heart of Chinatown on Little Newport Street which will be used to give emerging brands a chance to showcase their wares on a busy West End