Britain's only two-star Chinese restaurant reopens on Saturday
Photo: A. Wong
A. Wong, the only Chinese restaurant in Britain holding two Michelin stars, reopens on Saturday after ten weeks closed, its dining room rebuilt around a kitchen that diners can now watch through glass.
The restaurant closed on 1 August for a full reconstruction of both kitchen and dining room. A glass panel opposite reception looks directly into the new kitchen, and a row of tables along one side has been turned to face it, The Upcoming reported last week.
A. Wong has spent ten weeks rebuilding its dining room around a kitchen you can watch. In Shoreditch, Andrew Wong is building a pub.
Wong has spent the closure working at both ends of Chinese food in London. A. Wong ran a pop-up at the Mandarin Oriental in Mayfair through the summer, and in Shoreditch he is building Kong, a Chinese public house, with Amar Radia, a co-founder of Dishoom.
Kong takes just under 6,000 sq ft with an 800 sq ft courtyard on a 20-year lease from British Land, as anchor tenant of the Norton Folgate development, according to the landlord's announcement. The site traded as The Water Poet until 2019 and has housed a pub since 1792.
Wong described Kong's cooking in that announcement as untraditional, instinctive and fearless. The two projects land within months of each other, and nobody else working in British Chinese food is attempting that spread.
The new tasting menu at the pimlico reopening draws on contemporary fine dining in China and runs to sea cucumber with crispy pork skin and a chilli and ginger century egg, The Nudge reported. Wong said the result is "our exploration into craft, cuisine and table culture".
A show kitchen is also a standing risk. Michelin awards stars for what arrives at the table, and a room reorganised so that guests watch the pass commits the brigade to performing under observation every service, in a restaurant whose second star has been in place since January 2021.
Wong's record away from the tasting menu is mixed. His Bloomberg Arcade restaurant lasted two years, Hot Dinners noted when Kong was announced, and Kong is a considerably larger room than that one was.
The family history runs the other way. Wong's parents opened the Pimlico site in 1985, according to SquareMeal, and he took it over in 2012, renaming it after them, Annie and Albert. The first Michelin star followed in 2017.
A. Wong is at 70 Wilton Road, SW1V 1DE, five minutes from Victoria, and takes bookings through its own site. No price for the new menu has been published. We have not eaten it.
The restaurant his parents opened in 1985 was called Kym's. So was the one he opened in Bloomberg Arcade in 2018.
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