A Late Supper in Chinatown
Gerrard Street keeps its own hours, long after the rest of the West End has gone quiet. A short guide to eating properly here once the evening has already started elsewhere.
01A street built for evenings
London's Chinatown occupies a compact grid around Gerrard Street, pedestrianised and gated at either end, and it has run on a later rhythm than the rest of the West End since the community first settled here in the decades after the war. Shops selling tea, roast meats hanging in windows and small supermarkets stay lit long past the point most of central London has locked its doors, and the restaurants above and around them follow the same pattern.
For anyone booking an evening through Chinatown or the streets just outside it, that later rhythm makes a far better foundation for the plan than fighting against it, since almost nothing here rewards showing up early and everything rewards patience closer to midnight.
The neighbourhood sits wedged between Leicester Square and the rest of Soho, small enough to cross entirely in a few minutes yet dense enough to hold a full evening's worth of options within that short stretch. Newer visitors sometimes treat it as a place to pass through on the way somewhere else, which misses most of what makes it worth stopping in properly.
02Hot pot for two
Hot pot rooms cluster thickest along Gerrard Street and Wardour Street's southern end, a simmering pot at the table doing most of the cooking while conversation fills the gaps between courses. It is an unusually good format for two people who want an evening that runs slowly rather than rushes through set courses, plates arriving as they are wanted rather than on a fixed schedule.
Tina treats a hot pot table as one of the better ways to spend the middle hours of a Chinatown evening, since nobody at these tables is ever waiting on the next course, only deciding what goes into the pot next. The steam and the shared plates make it a naturally close way to sit together, closer than a table set with two separate mains ever quite manages.
Most of these rooms run large and loud on a weekend, which suits an evening that wants a bit of noise around it, though quieter tables toward the back or upstairs are usually available for anyone who asks.
03The karaoke rooms upstairs
A handful of Chinatown's buildings hide private karaoke rooms above street level, hourly hire, a screen, a microphone and a door that closes properly on the noise. It is a genuinely different kind of evening from a restaurant table, built entirely around two people's own soundtrack rather than a room full of other diners.
Sonya picks this route for an evening that wants to be silly for an hour before the night turns serious again, a private room doing more to loosen an evening up than another round of drinks at a bar would manage. A bottle of something simple usually arrives with the room, and nobody outside it hears a note of what happens inside.
Rooms tend to book by the hour rather than the evening, which suits a single stop on the way to somewhere else rather than an entire night built around it, though nothing stops a booking running longer if the mood holds.
04Through the gates and back out
Chinatown's ornate gates at either end of Gerrard Street mark a clean boundary, and stepping through either one changes the evening's register almost instantly, from the wider West End's crowds to a tighter, brighter, noisier few streets that feel like their own small district. Walking the full length takes barely five minutes, but doing it slowly, reading menus taped to windows, is part of the evening rather than a means of getting somewhere else.
A night out that starts in Chinatown and drifts back toward wider Soho afterward is one of the more natural sequences this corner of London offers, the walk back rarely running past ten minutes whichever direction it takes. Bakeries selling egg tarts and buns still lit past midnight make for an easy last stop before the walk continues, a small sweet thing to carry rather than a proper course.
05What we confirm beforehand
A Chinatown evening is arranged the same way any hotel visit or dinner booking through this house is arranged, a first name to open the conversation, then the details of where and roughly when, confirmed in writing before anyone travels.
A 25 percent deposit by bank transfer holds a standard evening. Dinner or a karaoke room is always paid for separately on the night, the way any restaurant or venue bill would be settled.
06Booking a Chinatown evening
A first hour opens from £250 on the same published rates that apply across the whole portfolio, a full dinner date from £900 wherever in the neighbourhood it lands. Message the house on WhatsApp with the date and roughly how the evening should run.
Late requests suit Chinatown particularly well, since almost nothing here closes at the hour most of London expects, and a message sent well after dinner time still finds plenty of options open across the neighbourhood.
Questions from guests
The main street stays lively, but the karaoke rooms and quieter tables set back from Gerrard Street give a private evening plenty of cover from the crowds outside, whatever the hour.
Considerably later than most of central London. Several kitchens and the karaoke rooms above them keep serving well past the hour most West End restaurants have already closed their doors for the night.
Easily. The walk between Gerrard Street and the rest of Soho rarely runs past ten minutes, so an evening can open in one and finish in the other without losing any time.
Not at all. It is simply a private, closed room for an hour of being a little silly together, no different in spirit from a quiet bar booth, only with a microphone and a screen in the corner.