Chinese Food in London, Region by Region: Cantonese, Sichuan, Hunanese and Dongbei

Chinatown is a fine place to start, but it is not where the whole story lives. London's Chinese cooking covers Sichuan heat, Hunanese smoke and sour, Xi'an noodles and the hearty northern dishes of Dongbei, and the people cooking them are scattered across the city. This guide is organised by place, so you can pick a neighbourhood and eat well within it.

Prices and hours change, so check before you go.

Soho and Chinatown: Sichuan, and a little further

Barshu, 28 Frith Street

Michelin describes Barshu as an institution in Soho, on a prime corner site, with the fiery flavours of Sichuan as the draw and other regions well catered for too. It sits in the ££ price band in the Michelin Guide, and Foodism calls it upmarket, with meals designed for sharing. That second point matters: order several dishes for the table rather than one each, and balance the numbing and chilli heat with something plainer. The postcode is W1D 5LF. You can read the Michelin entry for the details.

Real Beijing Food House, Chinatown

Time Out's Chinatown guide, updated in January 2026, opens with Real Beijing Food House, and its separate review gives the place 5 out of 5. The review points to Sichuan spice and all you can eat hotpot, which makes it a sociable choice for a group. It is in Chinatown proper, so treat it as the on ramp to the rest of this list rather than the destination.

Bloomsbury: Xi'an noodles

Master Wei

Time Out names Master Wei as its pick for biang biang noodles, the wide, hand pulled Xi'an style that suits chilli oil and a lot of chewing. It is in Bloomsbury, which makes it a sensible stop if you are near the British Museum or the university streets and want something that is not a sandwich.

Surrey Quays: Hunanese cooking

Fiery Flavors 烹湘味

Hunanese specialists are rare in London. A February 2026 feature in Restaurant magazine says only a handful exist, and that Hunan dishes seldom turn up elsewhere beyond the famous red braised pork. Time Out picked Fiery Flavors as its Hunan restaurant in its April 2026 round up of the city's best Chinese food.

The menu is the draw. Delivery listings show cured beef with white chilli in the £14 to £17 range, black pepper beef on a sizzling plate at £16.80 and water spinach at £14.80, which gives a sense of the scale. A diner on OpenTable praised the black fungus salad and the pork belly, and noted that the room can be noisy. Come in a group, order the sour, smoked and chilli heavy dishes, and expect volume. The restaurant is in Surrey Quays, in south east London, and it is the best argument in this guide for crossing the river.

Time Out's wider list, which runs across Cantonese, Sichuan, Xinjiang barbecue, Hunanese and Uyghur cooking, is worth keeping open in another tab: Time Out's best Chinese restaurants.

Pimlico: a banquet with a long history

Hunan, 51 Pimlico Road

A word of warning on the name. Hunan, at 51 Pimlico Road, SW1W 8NE, has been running since 1982, and it is not a strict regional specialist. A Resy profile describes the food as Cantonese, Hunanese and Taiwanese influenced, and it is a family run restaurant. What it offers instead is a no choice tasting menu: you tell the kitchen what you cannot eat and the dishes keep coming. Hardens describes banquet style service, and TheFork shows a score of 8.8 out of 10 from 11 reviews.

It suits people who like being looked after and do not mind giving up control of the order. If you want a menu to read and argue over, go elsewhere. Andy Hayler's write up gives the background on the restaurant's history: Andy Hayler on Hunan.

Aldgate: Dongbei and Sichuan

My Old Place, 88 to 90 Middlesex Street

Dongbei means the north east of China, and its food is hearty, savoury and built for sharing. My Old Place, at 88 to 90 Middlesex Street, E1 7EZ, near Petticoat Lane, serves Dongbei and Sichuan dishes. Foursquare tips describe it as excellent for north eastern and Sichuan cooking, and Tripadvisor reviewers describe it as a hive for Chinese expats working and living in London, which is usually a good sign for a regional kitchen.

Tripadvisor gives a price range of £12 to £29. Yelp lists Monday to Wednesday hours of 12:00 to 14:30 and 17:00 to 23:00, with a split between lunch and dinner, so check the current times before you set out. Its website is oldplace.co.uk.

Hammersmith: northern dishes after a gig

Sanbao Chinese Kitchen

Sanbao is a small place on Hammersmith high street, above a karaoke bar. An older Tripadvisor review calls it a takeaway with a few tables and a great range of northern Chinese, or Dongbei, dishes. A more recent one describes eating there at 10:30pm after a concert at the Apollo, which makes it useful for the late hours when most kitchens nearby have stopped. Treat it as a casual, no fuss stop rather than a destination dinner.

How to choose

• For Sichuan heat and a proper sit down meal: Barshu in Soho, or Real Beijing Food House if hotpot appeals.
• For noodles at lunch: Master Wei in Bloomsbury.
• For Hunanese cooking in earnest: Fiery Flavors in Surrey Quays.
• For a set banquet: Hunan on Pimlico Road.
• For Dongbei: My Old Place in Aldgate, or Sanbao in Hammersmith for something quicker and later.

A few notes on ordering

Regional Chinese menus reward groups. Most of the places above work best with three or more people, because the dishes are designed to be shared and the contrasts between them are the point. Pair something dry and numbing with something soupy, add a plain vegetable, and keep the rice coming. If you are cooking up a whole day of it, start in the west with the banquet at Pimlico, cross town to Soho for Sichuan, and finish east in Aldgate for the northern dishes. Each of those is a different cuisine, which is rather the point of leaving Chinatown.

It is also worth remembering that this is a changing scene. Restaurants close, refurbish and reopen, so confirm opening hours and booking details directly with each place before you travel.