New restaurants in London’s Chinatown celebrate East Asian and Southeast Asian cuisines
- Chinatown has been in London’s West End since the 1950s, and nowadays its restaurants serve a range of Southeast and East Asian cuisines
Speedboat Bar, named after the turbocharged long-tail boats that race along Bangkok’s rivers and canals, aims to bring a taste of the Thai capital’s Yaowarat Road to London’s Chinatown. Bright red stools are lined up for dining outside, while inside there’s a clash of colours and prints; the menu is Thai-Chinese.
Smiling young staff wear Hawaiian shirts or soccer jerseys, and the upstairs bar has TV screens showing Muay Thai bouts – and boat races.
This is one of several newly opened venues in London’s Chinatown between Soho and Leicester Square. Chinatown has existed in that location since the 1950s, when the Chinese community moved from East London’s docklands after the second world war and opened businesses there.
In recent years, the area has evolved from offering mainly Cantonese food to serving cuisines from across East and Southeast Asia. To showcase this variety, this summer Chinatown London is launching a #JourneyThroughChinatown promotion.
At lunchtime, Speedboat Bar is full of Londoners and tourists both Asian and Western. They sip Singha beer and tuck into dishes such as sweetcorn fritters with sweet and sour dipping sauce, pickled mustard greens with Chinese sausage, minced beef with holy basil and crispy pork curry.
