Wong Kei
Chinese restaurant · Chinatown ·
Cantonese classics, vast menu, communal dining, iconic chilli oil
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71333045/TANDOH_FINAL__1_.0.jpg "Wong Kei by Don Caminos/Eater")
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23999865/cook_as_you_are_cover.jpg "Wong Kei by eater.com")
Cantonese classics, vast menu, communal dining, iconic chilli oil
"Look high above Wong Kei’s sign and you’ll learn that before it was the Cantonese canteen and Chinatown institution it is today, it was home to a renowned Victorian wigmaker. This was a noteworthy building then and it’s a noteworthy building now. Without its slapped-on-your-table wonton noodle soups and roasted meats bathing in sweet, shining umami gravy, London would be a much poorer place." - heidi lauth beasley, jake missing, rianne shlebak, daisy meager, sinead cranna
"Gerrard Street’s Cantonese institution needs little introduction. Wong Kei is a decades-old London restaurant famous for its multistory dining room, roast meats (duck, char siu), wontons, red-ringed plates, and the now-cult (if much overstated) brusque service. Its enduring appeal — in spite of newer, trendier, regionally diverse restaurants in central London’s Chinatown — is its faithfulness to the traditions of dependable and delicious Cantonese cooking in the U.K., the stuff of a bygone era. In other words, it’s a giant, 500-seat living monument to a time before bubble waffles and Instagram-first openings. Best for: A nostalgic UK-Cantonese meal with a group." - Adam Coghlan
"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 Cantonese institution in Chinatown isn’t somewhere you come for the finest hand-pulled noodles or the most carefully simmered and deeply flavoured soup. But it is a place for everyone who knows the value of a steaming hot meal for under £10." - jake missing, daisy meager, sinead cranna, rianne shlebak
"Stepping into Wong Kei’s dazzle can be a welcome jolt to the nighttime mania of Chinatown outside. A functional Cantonese restaurant with highly functioning overhead lighting, Wong Kei is a place that we love, warts and all, just as you should with the person you come with." - jake missing
"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." - jake missing, heidi lauth beasley, rianne shlebak, sinead cranna