Chinatown is always a good time. Sandwiched between Theatreland and Soho, the network of streets are perfumed with some of the city’s best dishes and decorated with red, hanging lanterns and roast ducks in windows. There are dozens of great restaurants serving Hunan classics, Sichuan specialities, Malaysian favourites, and more. But it can be hard to figure out what’s worthwhile—which is where our Chinatown guide can help you out.

If you're in the area, we've got suggestions for Covent Garden and Soho too.

No rating: This is a restaurant we want to re-visit before rating, or it’s a coffee shop, bar, or dessert shop. We only rate spots where you can eat a full meal.

This Chinatown Cantonese institution isn’t somewhere you come for the finest hand-pulled noodles or the most deeply flavoured broth. What you come for is arguably London’s best no-nonsense canteen restaurant. There’s always a table and there’s always their electrifying chilli oil. Without Wong Kei and its slapped-on-your-table wonton noodle soups and roasted meats bathing in sweet shining umami gravy, London would be a much poorer place.

The char kway teow (smoky stir-fried flat noodles with pork and prawns) at Malaysian spot Rasa Sayang is a must-order. Everything else on the menu (like the beef rendang) is great as well. Whoever you bring to this bustling spot—a group of friends or just yourself at lunchtime—you’ll leave full and satisfied. The ground floor usually has some spots saved for walk-ins and the comfy booths are an ideal place to camp out for a couple of hours. But if you like being in the thick of it, then the smaller buzzy downstairs dining room is probably for you.

This small restaurant has a certain energy that you’ll feel the moment you walk in the room. Maybe it’s the music. Maybe it’s the lighting. Maybe it’s your server reaching over to make notes on your menu, just to be sure you don’t miss the good stuff. The Palomar is a great restaurant throughout, but most of the fun happens at the bar. Pull up a seat and work your way through tasty Israeli and Mediterranean-inspired sharing plates, which can mean anything from fluffy kubaneh bread and dips, to juicy chicken in chilli butter.

Barshu is the number one option for spicy Sichuan food in central London. The dan dan noodles and dumplings in chilli oil are very tasty, and the amount of spicy and deep-fried things on the menu means that it’s fantastic if you just want to knock back a few beers and eat with your hands. Its sleek and shiny aesthetic make it a great place for a business-y lunch or date night.

Few things are more painful than going to a Cantonese restaurant and realising, thanks to the cruel limitations of biology, that you can only eat so much of the enormously enticing menu. So, any trip to Orient for dim sum or otherwise should be with many bellies and many dishes in mind. The dim sum at this classic Chinatown restaurant is always great: fried and steamed, pork and prawn-filled, with more dishes than there are twitchy fingers at the table. The big round tables or banquettes can also fit double-figure groups with ease.

Speedboat Bar is a fun and fiery Thai restaurant on the edge of Chinatown. With an upstairs bar open until 1am on weekends, self-pour three-litre Singha beer towers, and wolfable curries—it’s also a lot of fun. It’s soundtracked by the chatter of tightly knit groups of friends and the scraping of spoons in excellent sauces and broths. The unapologetically fiery drunkard’s noodles are a must-order, so is the lurid red, meltingly gorgeous plate of beef tongue and tendon.

There are lots of Cantonese restaurants in the area to visit if you just want a plate of roast meat and rice, or some noodles, but Cafe TPT is our favourite. Nostalgia for old-school Chinatown aside, we’ve been coming here for more than 10 years, and you can get a full meal with friends, have a catch-up, or eat a solo plate of chow mein. Get the roast pork and char siu pork with rice, or the beef flank curry, which is one of the most underrated dishes in London.

Even if you know exactly where this takeaway hatch is, chances are you’ll end up looking like you’re auditioning for a role in a Specsavers advert while trying to find it. On the Shaftesbury Avenue side of Chinatown, Kung Fu Burger is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Chinese burger spot which is great at putting delicious things—tender shredded pork and meltingly soft duck in a moreish, sweet hoisin sauce—between flaky buns. It’s one of the best meals for under a tenner in London.

This Taiwanese fried chicken shop looks unpromising from the outside, but Good Friend is one of London’s best grab-and-go spots. Everything is fried to order, it’s delicious, and you get a lot of food for your money. Skip the wings and get the popcorn chicken or the flattened chicken breast if you’re hungry (it’s huge). When it comes to making decisions about which of the 11 seasonings to shake over your chicken, plum and chilli is our move.

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At this tight-knit Korean BBQ spot on Wardour Street, Kaytranada pumps from the speakers and LA galbi sizzles from every chrome table’s grills. Pochawa Grill is inspired by pojangmachas in South Korea—stalls where you can eat, drink, and slur words with friends until the early hours—and, though it’s only open until 12am on the weekends, it’s a fun interpretation. The banchan and BBQ platters are prepared and presented to a high standard, and the only sound more constant than the bass is that of ice-cold bottles of Cass being cracked.

Roast duck. It’s the whole reason you come to Four Seasons. While most of the other things on the Cantonese menu won’t blow you away, the duck is by far one of the best things you can eat in the area, if not all of central London. You’ll want at least a quarter per person and you’ll want it off the bone. The sauce they pour all over it is incredible too. The stewed pork belly with vegetables is also a great call, as well as the Chinese broccoli. Bring friends and wear your stretchy clothes.

Aimless wandering around Chinatown is all fun and games until someone gets hangry. When that alarm bell sounds, Tao Tao Ju is a reliable, casual spot for some sating dim sum under comforting yellow lighting. Towers of baskets go up and down its two floors, back and forth between the kitchen and tables of snapping chopsticks. While not the finest dim sum in London, it’s some of the best in Chinatown, and the pork and crab siu mai is suitably plump, while the deep-fried wonton cheung fun is as slippery and crunchy as they come.

The tiny Chinese takeaway spot in Chinatown makes jianbing and it’s one of the best-value, quick lunches in the area, depending on the size of your eyes when it comes to the fillings. The savoury crêpe-like dishes start at around £5 but when you load them with marinated pork belly and enoki mushrooms, it’s more like a tenner. The jianbing is painted and fried with two eggs, chilli oil, a feisty BBQ sauce, and youtiao. Spicy, meaty, crunchy, messy.

Seeing a stack of bamboo steamers coming your way at Beijing Dumpling will get your heart racing. As soon as you walk into this casual little Chinese spot on Lisle Street you can see the chefs making pork xiaolongbao, huge seafood dumplings, and vegetable wontons. It’s always a good idea to go heavy on the dumplings, but they also serve some excellent garlic prawns.

The Eight is a big, pine-heavy, canteen-style, Hong Kong-inspired teahouse that has an air of Muji about it. But you don’t come here for another LED diffuser, you come here for eggs. The whipped volcano egg—a whirling, swirling, mound of eggs with curry on the side—is as aesthetically pleasing as it is flavour-wise. Other things, like roasted meats and noodle soups, are decent enough, but you’re better off going with the moist, butter-laden, pineapple bun.

Chinatown isn’t lacking in grab-and-go options, and it has another excellent one in Jíxíang Baozi, a tiny Fujianese takeaway spot. The plump handheld fritters lay golden and tanned in the window of this cupboard-sized space and there’s a choice of chicken, pork, and oyster. Take it to go straight from the tray, or ask for another dunk in the fryer if you like your snacks steaming hot and crispy. Of the three, the oyster cake reigns supreme. Salty and packed with a shredded handful of bean sprouts, cabbage, seaweed, and onion—this is a sensational snack.

There’s often a queue for Leong’s Legend in the evenings but each time we’ve been, it’s been worth it. The Taiwanese dishes are interesting, and there’s something for everyone. The menu jumps around a lot but you should get the soup dumplings and stir-fried green beans with pork, and the whole crab that comes smothered in garlic and chilli. The hot pot is also a great way to spend a laid-back evening with friends.

Everyone has that one friend. You know, the one who lovingly butters a piece of toast for you while saying, “eat this, you’ll feel better for it in the morning”. For us, that friend is Old Town 97. This converted townhouse isn’t necessarily the best Chinese spot in all of Chinatown but thanks to their big group tables, quick turnaround, and 4am-ish closing time, it’s arguably the most useful. Get involved in the duck section of the menu—everything from the stir-fried duck in black bean sauce to the fried udon with shredded duck are go-to winners.

Jinli is 30 seconds from Leicester Square and if you’re craving Sichuan food, this is one of the spots to hit in Chinatown. In particular, the hot and dry pots are perfect for a big group meal, and the whole deep-fried sea bass covered in chilli oil is a must-order. It’s crispy, it’s moist, and you’ll find yourself mining for more fish among the oil, dry chilli, and Sichuan peppercorns. If you’re moving in numbers, this is a good option.