Chinese restaurants in Europe
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Oriental City
This huge Hong Kong-style restaurant with the requisite red lanterns is always lively. Join gaggles of local Chinese for daily dim sum (11:30 to 16:30; we like the meaty, flavoursome cha sieuw bao pork buns) and a 24-page menu (!) of classic Canto cuisine.
reviewed
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Nam Kee
It won’t win any design awards, but Nam Kee is the most popular Chinese spot in town. There’s a new, fancier location at Geldersekade 117.
reviewed
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Yang Sing
A serious contender for best Chinese restaurant in England, Yang Sing attracts diners from all over with its exceptional Cantonese cuisine. From a dim-sum lunch to a full evening banquet, the food is superb, and the waiters will patiently explain the intricacies of each item to punters who can barely pronounce the dishes' names. Bookings suggested for evening meals.
reviewed
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D
La Chine Masséna
This enormous restaurant specialising in Cantonese and Chiu Chow cuisine is a real favourite in Chinatown; to ensure it would have good joss for the coming year we fed the dragon lettuce at the last Lunar New Year celebrations. The dim sum here is especially good and women still go around the dining area with trolleys calling out their wares.
reviewed
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New World
If you hanker after dim sum, the three-storey New World can oblige. All the old favourites – from ha gau (prawn dumpling) to pai gwat (steamed pork spare rib) – are available from steaming carts wheeled around the dining room daily 11am to 6pm.
reviewed
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Kitajska Zvezda
If you're looking for a fix of rice or noodles, try the 'Chinese Star' on the river just south of the Old Town. Szechuan dishes, including the mapo doufu (tofu with garlic and chilli) are quite good.
reviewed
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Déli Kinai Gyorsétterem
This very cheap Chinese place just opposite the Déli train station is suitable for a last-minute feed before you head off.
reviewed
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Hakkasan
Hidden down a lane like all fashionable haunts need to be, the first Chinese restaurant to get a Michelin star combines celebrity status, a dimly lit basement dining room, persuasive cocktails and sophisticated food.
reviewed
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Wongs
This top-rated Chinese restaurant, 5km from the city centre, is a family-run classic with subdued décor and friendly service that raises the bar on warmth and courtesy. The menu is not especially adventurous – it sticks to tried and tested dishes that won’t offend the conservative Irish palate – but what it does serve is generally excellent. Our absolute favourite is the duck in a carved-out pineapple shell surrounded by pieces of the fruit and dripping with sauce. Upstairs is a teppanyaki room – a private dining room where the food is cooked in the middle of the seated group – for that special occasion or business dinner.
reviewed
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Shanghai Blues
What was once the St Giles Library now houses one of London’s most stylish Chinese restaurants. The dark and atmospheric interior – think black and blue tables and chairs punctuated by bright red screens – recalls imperial Shanghai with a modern twist, and the menu is just as disarming, particularly the ‘new style’ dim sum served as appetisers, the pipa duck and the twice-cooked pork belly. There’s a vast selection of teas, some of them quite rare. There’s a three-course weekday lunch for £15 and live jazz on Friday and Saturday nights.
reviewed
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Yauatcha
Dim sum restaurants don't come much cooler than this, and the menu is fantastic and Michelin-starred. It's housed in an architecturally interesting building, with a choice of light-filled ground floor tables or a hip basement area.
reviewed
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Hong Kong
An impressively gaudy décor, with ornately carved wooden panels, an illuminated, painted-glass ceiling and red silk seat cushions, Cantonese pop music and a clientele that includes local Chinese families – it all smacks of authenticity. That extends to the mostly Cantonese menu, which, along with favourites such as dim sum, soy-sauce duck and salt-and-pepper shrimp, has such adventurous options as ‘cold sliced pork tongue with soy sauce’, ‘chicken with strange tastes’ and ‘chicken with five smells’.
reviewed
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Ken Lo's Memories of China
The late Kenneth Lo brought Chinese food to new levels in London, and the service and décor of the place reflect that position. The interior is elegant, oriental minimalism and the noise levels are agreeably low. There are several set menus (around £20 - including a vegetarian one and an unforgettable 'Gastronomic Tour of China' (around £31r person) - and all the well-proportioned dishes feature a splendidly light touch and wonderful contrasts of flavours and textures.
reviewed
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Bar Shu
The story goes that a visiting businessman from Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province in China, found London’s Chinese food offerings so inauthentic that he decided to open up his own restaurant with five chefs from home. Well, it’s authentic all right, with dishes redolent of smoked chillies and the all-important Sichuan peppercorn. We love the spicy gung bao chicken with peanuts and the mapo doufu (bean curd braised with minced pork and chilli).
reviewed
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Dragon Castle
It’s hard to imagine that what just might be the best nonchain Chinese restaurant in London is hidden within one of the brutalist buildings of deepest, darkest Kennington. But it’s true, and even the incomparable food critic Fay Maschler of the Evening Standard concurs. The duck, pork and seafood (deep-fried crispy oysters; crab with black bean) are renowned – but come for the dim sum (£1.90 to £3), especially at weekend lunch.
reviewed
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Ma
Champion chef Tim Raue brings dedication to freshness, innovative aromas and local ingredients to his new flagship restaurant at the Adlon Hotel. The décor alone is swoon-worthy, especially the 2000-year-old Han dynasty terracotta horse (ma is Chinese for horse) and the gilded carving. The kitchen takes Asian cuisine into the culinary stratosphere and everything is light and healthy thanks to the complete lack of white sugar, flour and other ‘bad carbs’.
reviewed
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Imperial Chinese Restaurant
This long-established restaurant is a favourite with the Chinese community and is noted for its lunchtime dim sum and its we-don’t-smile-but-we’re-efficient service. If you’re looking for some genuine Chinese dishes in an authentic atmosphere, there’s no better time to go than Sunday, when the Imperial serves brunch Chinese-style in what is known as yum cha, or ‘drink tea’, the traditional accompaniment to dim sum.
reviewed
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Min Jiang
This stunner of a Chinese restaurant, perched on the top of a hotel owned by a Hong Kong–based group, offers million-dollar views of Kensington Palace and Gardens as well as arguably the best Peking duck (half/whole £25/48) in all of London. You’ll consume everything from the skin and feet to the shredded meat and then get the bill. It’s cooked in a wood-burning stove. There’s excellent seafood here, too.
reviewed
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Baozi Inn
The smaller sister of Bar Shu has its own personality and a unique (and cheap) menu. Decorated in vintage style that plays at kitsch communist pop, with old Chinese communist songs tinkling out of the speakers, Baozi Inn serves quality Beijing and Chengdu-style street food, with things like dan dan noodles (served with spicy beef) handmade daily. It’s authentic, delicious and cheap food gold in often-unreliable Chinatown.
reviewed
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Huang He
One of the first authentic Chinese restaurants to open in the city in the early 1990s and still one of the best, Huang He is in lower Vrśovice, close to (if not actually in) Nusle. On crowded nights, the atmosphere is akin to a raucous Czech pub (a previous incarnation), and you’ll be tempted, like everyone else, to wash down that spicy chicken kung-pao with a half-litre or two of beer. Phone ahead to reserve a table.
reviewed
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New Edinburgh Rendezvous
Edinburgh’s oldest Chinese restaurant, dating from 1956, is still one of its best. A no-frills, no-nonsense place, it offers an extensive menu of expertly prepared Cantonese and Peking dishes with classic favourites, such as shredded beef with chilli sauce and aromatic crispy duck, alongside more adventurous dishes, such as shredded sea blubber, boneless duck’s feet with mustard sauce, and pickled cabbage with chilli sauce.
reviewed
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La Chaumière en Chine
Parisians in the know would warn you against eating in ethnic restaurants outside ethnic quartiers, but the Chinese embassy just down the road from this place makes it a notable exception to that rule. The largely Chinese clientele favour the crevettes au sel de cinq parfums (prawns in five spice salt) , the canard aux champignons noirs (duck with black mushrooms) and the dim sum.
reviewed
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Čínská Zahrada
Zahrada is a largely authentic Chinese restaurant that’s good enough to draw people here from around the city. In fact, it’s not uncommon to see lines of Asian tourists streaming down the sidewalks, all headed here, at mealtimes. The very hot ‘dry fried chicken’ (pieces of chicken cooked on the bone in red pepper flake) is one of the local favourites; ask the waiter to advise. Dine on the terrace in nice weather.
reviewed
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Mandarin Kitchen
This popular Cantonese restaurant with the naff décor prepares some of the best seafood in town so be prepared to wait for a table at the busiest times (eg Sunday lunch) if you haven't booked. Lobster, prawns, whole steamed grouper - all is excellent and they have a particular way with what must be house-made XO sauce, a newfangled condiment made from crushed dried scallops, chilli, garlic and oil.
reviewed
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Mennyei Ízek
That’s ‘Celestial Tastes’ to you… This little Korean-Chinese hole in the wall in Óbuda serves excellent and very cheap dishes such as spicy pork with eggplant (1880Ft) and there are lots of vegetarian dishes such as wild mountain vegetables with kimchi (1880Ft). Weekday set lunches cost 990Ft and 1490Ft. It’s a great place for refuelling to/from Aquincum.
reviewed
