BRITISH DINERS REFINE APPETITES FOR CHINESE CUISINE
Dishes have long been available, but local tastes are evolving
William Poon opened his first Poon’s Restaurant in 1973 in an 8-square-meter space in Lisle Street, Central London. It had been occupied by an electrical supplies shop and was only big enough to accommodate four tables.
But Poon’s Cantonese food became so popular he opened six more restaurants. One he opened in 1976 was awarded a Michelin star in 1980 and named the best Chinese restaurant in London. He sold his business in 2003 and retired.
Poon, an immigrant from Hong Kong who arrived in the United Kingdom in 1967, said the secret of his success was his stubbornness. He never gave up traditional cooking methods.
“I am a very stubborn and conservative person,” he said. “I always try my best to keep the original taste as much as possible.”
Looking back on his time at the forefront of Chinese cuisine in the British capital, he remembers with pride that he was the first in London to serve stir-fried beef with a “stinky” shrimp paste. Despite its popularity in Hong Kong, his peers in Chinatown thought he was crazy because they assumed the dish would not suit the palates of Western diners.
But Poon’s bold move was successful and his dishes were well received by diners — locals as well as those with roots in China. His barbecue pork or char siu, roasted chicken livers and pig’s intestines were among the most popular items on his menu.
As his first restaurant’s reputation grew, and with people waiting in a public house next door for tables to open up, it became clear the location was too small to accommodate the growing crowd of fans. One of Poon’s solutions was to create set menus, which he thinks were the first of their kind in the United Kingdom.
“At that time, all the restaurants had very long menus and it was easy for customers to get lost,” Poon said. “Because my restaurant was so small, I could not afford them to take a long time to read the menu, so I designed different set menus labeled A, B, C, D … That became a trend and other restaurants started to follow.”
At the time, Cantonese cuisine was prospering in London, driven by a sharp increase in the number of immigrants arriving from Hong Kong.
Celebrity TV chef Ken Hom, author of My Stir-Fried Life, said, “The boom in Cantonese food came from the early immigration of Cantonese immigrants, as they were the first to ... leave a turbulent country racked by poverty — along with the decline of imperial China.”
However, the earliest Chinese restaurants in London predate Poon’s by a century, according to the British Chinese Heritage Centre. They date to the 1880s when stalls sprang up around London’s docklands, where Chinese sailors had settled.
The Limehouse area of east London housed the first Chinatown in the British capital, but it was the International Health Exhibition in the west London district of South Kensington in 1884 that introduced Chinese food to the British public in a big way. This was followed in 1908 by the first recorded opening of a formal Chinese restaurant, in Glasshouse Street, off Piccadilly Circus, which was appropriately named The Chinese Restaurant.
Similar things were happening in other cities. In Liverpool in the 1930s, former Chinese sailors were serving dishes from Ningbo (Zhejiang province), Fuzhou (Fujian province), Shantou (Guangdong province), Hainan province and Shanghai. These included chop suey (a mix of meat and vegetables cooked together), fishcakes and black jam cakes. In 1938, chop suey, chow mein and fried rice were popular among students at a restaurant in Cambridge, eastern England, because they were cheap.
In 1939, Chinese recipes were first broadcast on the BBC and Chinese cooking ingredients became available at the Shanghai Emporium on Greek Street in London’s Soho district.
In the late 1950s, Chinese restaurants started serving meals in three courses to cater to British diners. By the 1970s, the phrase “Hong Kong style” had emerged to describe Cantonese cuisine that combined exotic or expensive ingredients with Western catering.
London’s Chinatown moved to its current location in Soho in the 1970s, when rents were relatively cheap and the district was known for crime and prostitution. For nearly 50 years, it has been the heartland of the UK’s Cantonese community and, during this time, many Britons have come to regard Cantonese cuisine as the only type of Chinese food.
But Hom said attitudes toward Chinese food have changed enormously in recent years as people have come to realize that Cantonese food is just one of the many Chinese cuisines on offer.
“Chinese food at the beginning of the 1980s was sweet and sour pork mainly,” he said. “Most Brits had a very stereotypical view of Chinese food. Now, you are seeing more regional Chinese food, and it is no longer just Cantonese food.”
Restaurants are serving a wide range of authentic cuisines from the Chinese mainland, including dishes from Sichuan province in Southwest China, Hunan province in Central China, along with food from the north of the country.
Hom said, “British people have become more knowledgeable about Chinese food.”
He said modern Chinese restaurants in London are much more authentic, reflecting the sophistication of British diners, including those who are likely to have traveled to China.
With an increasing number of Chinese living in the UK, upscale Chinese restaurants are making inroads into the British restaurant scene.
Founded in 2001, Hakkasan Hanway Place in Central London is a high-end Chinese restaurant owned by the Hakkasan Group. It won its first Michelin star within a year of its launch, which it still holds.
Tong Chee Hwee, executive head chef at Hakkasan, said the restaurant did nothing in particular to earn the Michelin star apart from trying to maintain the consistency of its high-quality food and service.
“The general Chinese food landscape at the time (in 2001) was more-traditional Cantonese cuisine,” Tong said. “The philosophy behind Hakkasan was to combine traditional Cantonese food with a new interpretation. Unlike the traditional fine-dining concept, Hakkasan offers customers an experience through sight, sound, smell, touch and taste.”
Tong said that people today also care more about their health and eating habits.
“They care more about their diet and well-being and are more educated about nutrition,” he said. “We wanted to create something that was authentic and true to our roots but, at the same time, contemporary and interesting.”
Five Chinese restaurants in London have been awarded a Michelin star. There are 72 Michelin star establishments in the city, three owned by the Hakkasan Group. On average, about 40 percent of Hakkasan’s customers are of Asian origin.
Gordon Cheung, an associate professor in International Relations of China at Durham University, has conducted research into Chinese food. He said: “The recent up-scaling phenomenon is partly due to Chinese influence and, especially, more mainland Chinese coming to the UK as students or tourists. They bring with them their own Chinese food and eating experience ... so they somehow demand a more authentic food experience.”
Cheung said entrepreneurs are happy to meet this demand.
As a result, more opportunities have emerged and more authentic Chinese restaurants have opened, he said.
Authentic Chinese cuisine is becoming increasingly popular in the UK, and the dishes on offer have progressed significantly in the past decade, but Poon believes Cantonese cuisine will always have a special place in British diners’ hearts.
“Sichuan and Hunan cuisines are good, but people are unlikely to eat hot and spicy food every day, so I don’t think Cantonese food will disappear,” he said. “It is impossible to replace the originality of Cantonese cuisine.”