15 restaurants for Lunar New Year
Published 07 February 2024

Forget London! For some of the best Korean food in the UK, stay in Bristol and visit Kyu Jeon and Duncan Robertson’s modest but wholly authentic restaurant – a quirky, cramped space in Stokes Croft (known for its Banksy-esque street art, independent shops and lively nightlife). The best seats are on the ground floor; otherwise, descend to the basement dining room, where rough stone walls, chalkboard menus and the clattering of chopsticks give the place an air of friendly, authentic bustle.

The menu changes regularly, but there’s always banchan – those little plates of pickles, vegetables and other morsels that are the backbone of a Korean meal. With their range of flavours and textures, these little marvels of perfection are quite unique. Other not-to-be-missed delights range from a salad of Korean cabbage with toasted seaweed and pine nuts to a combo of spicy braised tofu with king oyster mushroom and Chinese greens, while fish might include Porthilly oysters with 'kimchi ice' or spicy monkfish with mussels and chrysanthemum leaves. But there's one dish that has captured everyone's imagination – tongdak (crisp-skinned wood-roasted chicken stuffed with sticky rice and served with tangy pickled mooli and dipping sauces).

As for dessert, variously flavoured Jersey milk soft-serve vie with a light matcha and chestnut tiramisu. Korean beer, exotic cocktails and soju (Korea's classic fermented spirit) are available alongside a brief list of around a dozen wines that will take you to places you wouldn’t expect to visit in a Korean restaurant.

‘This place is a Brighton institution and I have been coming here for about 35 years. At lunchtimes, they comfortably do the best dim sum in town. Very friendly staff, consistent food and very affordable. The sesame prawn toast, cheung fun, and prawn and vegetable dumplings are all excellent.’
Ben McKellar

‘Cheap, delicious and authentic,’ is one snappy verdict on this constantly rammed, no-bookings Chinese. Queues come with the territory, long waits are inevitable and the whole experience can seem a tad perfunctory, but there’s no disputing the sheer quality of the food. Regulars praise everything from the Shanghai dumplings in soup (‘great depth of flavour’) to the BBQ roast duck, ‘beautifully cooked’ salt-and-pepper squid and a host of peasant-style regional specialities. Also try the 'dazzling' prawn wontons with house-made salad cream (a throwback to old Hong Kong). To drink? Bubble tea, perhaps. Helpings are more than generous, so expect to be well-fed.

Bridport has punched above its weight food-wise since the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall days but it's still a surprise to come across this cool café-cum-dining room serving terrific cocktails and pan-Asian small plates. There's an emphasis on dumplings with creative fillings (organic curried lamb with curry leaf and cayenne, perhaps) though other dishes such as charred organic pork belly with pickled mustard seeds are just as good. Expect friendly, personal service from the owner and his young team.

One of the first wave of restaurants and bars to move into the upcoming ‘foodie oasis’ of Stirchley (a few miles to the south of Birmingham city centre), this ‘brilliant independent eatery’ sits on the site of a greasy spoon café (the original sign is still visible). Chef/owner Ming Nham was in the music/fashion business before taking to the stoves and it shows in the restaurant's cool soundtrack, buzzy vibe and hipster clientele. Here is a super-relaxed, friendly and comfortable venue serving food that's 'easy to get excited about'.

The commendably short and very reasonably priced menu (plus daily specials) could promise anything from ‘turmeric fried fish’ with pickles and nuoc cham to Marmite and peanut-butter chicken wings with a deep umami hit from the yeasty love-it-or-hate-it spread. Otherwise, the short weekly line-up homes in on noodles and curries: the former (served at room temperature) might include BBQ pork shoulder with house pickles, fresh herbs and peanuts, while the latter features meaty cuts as well as salt-and-pepper tofu.

Desserts are ‘locally made by Odi and Moo’. To drink, half a dozen low-intervention, organic and vegan wines sit alongside beers produced in collaboration with the Birmingham Brewing Company – their EVN Yuzu lager works particularly well with the food. There's a popular terrace outside. 

Attracting the cool, the curious and the convivial for its happy melange of sipping and supping, this joint venture comes from the comestible creatives behind the Thornwood Bar and one-time Malaysian staple, Julie’s Kopitiam (RIP). It's an equal billing that doubtless hits a sweet spot for many but may prove a little too bar-heavy for some. The decor is certainly more funky than formal, with stripped-back, post-industrial shabby-chic touches offering an eclectic and buzzy backdrop to animated chatter and diverse tunes. Amiable staff weave between closely packed tables distributing kaleidoscopic cocktails – pique your appetite with a bar classic from the 'Straight Up Swally' selection or perhaps brave the on-theme exoticism of a banana sesame sour. Meanwhile, a tsunami of tasty morsels races from the kitchen. Navigating the small-plates menu as a group brings the perennial challenge of quantity and pace. While the swift and unfussy delivery is obviously a local crowd-pleaser, staggered ordering may pay dividends for those wishing to slowly savour. Prawn toasts with chilli are generous, flavoursome and unapologetically calorific, while the Malaysian vegetable curry offers coconut comfort zapped with a confident hit of fragrant roasted chilli oil. Side dishes such as miso/garlic potato or chips with basil mayo (or the ubiquitous Kewpie mayo) remind you that, at heart, this is well-prepared street food given a contemporary makeover. As a final flourish (before one last cocktail perhaps), the Ga Ga sundae drizzles rich sesame caramel over passion fruit and coconut before balancing the sweetness with sour mango and salty peanut. Subtle? No. Bowl-lickingly tasty? Definitely. Booking is essential.

In-the-know locals call ahead to ensure they don’t have to endure a long wait at this tiny, cash-only Vietnamese spot. Designed and run primarily as a takeaway (although there are a few foldable seats and one table inside), Hoa Phuong is essentially a one-woman show and you’re expected to play by her rules: opening times are hit and miss, and everything comes in disposable packaging (although regulars often bring their own containers). The spicy beef noodle soup gets rave reviews, but the short menu also features one-plate rice dishes (lemongrass chicken, grilled pork), plus spring rolls and suchlike. We recommend grabbing your takeaway and heading to nearby Elephant Park for a picnic.

*Following a refurb, Kota Kai has relaunched with more covers, a 'statement bar', updated interiors and a revamped menu including dishes from the Josper grill. Watch for a new review coming soon.*

Facing Jude Kereama’s acclaimed main restaurant, Kota, this second-string eatery is a first-floor space that feels a little like a loft apartment. A very long room offering good views over the harbour, it serves up a largely pan-Asian menu of popular favourites – say salt-and-pepper squid, tempura tofu, soft-shell crab bao, seafood laksa, vegetable ramen or chicken massaman – with one or two western interlopers in the shape of mushroom arancini, feather-blade steak or fish and chips. Drink cocktails or wine from £25.

It’s noisy and tightly packed but what really stands out is the service: here is a Chinese eatery where the staff are genuinely friendly and cheerful, tending to everyone’s needs with ‘unobtrusive efficiency’. Like the Xi’an Impressions original in north London, the food is an ‘outright bargain’ and truly authentic, with top honours going to the long, flat, hand-pulled noodles from Shaanxi province: the minced beef and vegetable version comes highly recommended. Other ‘deeply satisfying’ platefuls show off the kitchen’s street-food repertoire, from spicy smacked cucumber to the now-famous stewed pork burger. Portions are exceedingly generous.

The Westgate Arcade in Halifax is probably not very high on your search list if you’re looking for authentic Korean food, but this tiny little joint run by two sisters is the real thing and ‘a bit of a find’. You can drop by for a takeaway or squeeze your way in and bag one of the plain tables for a sit-down treat (there are extra tables outside overlooking the passing trade). Big dishes and composite bowls go down well, from the classic bibimbap spiced up with extra gochujang sauce to stir-fried glass noodles and the ever-popular rice bowls topped with BBQ bulgogi beef, spicy marinated pork or Korean fried chicken (a favourite with regulars). Kimchi pancakes, ramen soups and plates of spicy rice cakes topped with hard-boiled egg are also in contention, and it’s worth loading up with a few smaller items – perhaps some seaweed balls or crescent-shaped pan-fried dumplings. When it comes to the sweet stuff, the kitchen goes off-piste with an assortment of crêpes and waffles (the owners previously ran My Crêpe on Halifax Borough Market), plus luscious ice-cream sundaes and the must-order honey-bread banoffee cake. Unlicensed, but teas, coffees, milkshakes and smoothies do the trick.

The simple shop frontage and low-key location don’t do justice to the warm welcome and vibrant dishes offered at this neighbourhood restaurant, which gives pan-Asian cuisine an intriguing vegan spin. Suissi is a full-on family affair with Malaysian-born Mama Lim sharing her home-style plant-based creations, while assorted members of her next generation foster a cheery informality out front. Lim's evangelistic commitment to natural ingredients rightly eschews the common flavour shortcuts of refined sugars, MSG and the like. A smattering of starters might range from crisp pickles with explosive pops of pineapple punctuating a punchy achar (peanut and chilli sauce) to shimeji mushrooms spiked with salt and chilli, so crisp and utterly moreish that another portion follows in quick succession. Larger appetites will be sated with soupy noodle combinations deploying a wide variety of traditional broth and stock bases, each one handmade from scratch. Mushrooms also star in other assured dishes, from an intense 'lion's mane' rendang to a 'king trumpet' katsu in a curried sauce based on apples and carrots. Sweet finishes embrace a homemade frozen ‘scoop of the week’ or pisang goreng (Indonesian banana fritters). Mainstream Asian beers and a short set of vinous staples underpin an idiosyncratic cocktail list melding modern mixology with oriental themes (try the Sakura Fizz, which combines floral and fruity flavours to recreate Japanese cherry blossom season in a glass). The place itself has a certain make-do-and-mend studenty optimism – slightly shambolic with an eclectic but happy jumble of treasured odds and ends. Mind you, the lively, eclectic crowd jostling for the 30-odd covers are here for the food, not the interior design.

Set up by three friends (the eponymous ‘uncles’) who spent their childhood hanging around the roast meat cafés of Hong Kong’s Wan Chai Market, this fully fledged restaurant on the western edge of Brixton Village follows on from the trio’s bare-bones outlets in Liverpool Street and Camden. Not surprisingly, top billing goes to that holy trinity of Chinese roasting – chopped-to-order Cantonese duck, crispy pork belly and char siu pork, with Hainan chicken as an extra. The duck ('a wondrous blush pink’) is cooked to near perfection and served on rice or atop a fine broth of duck bones, while the pork belly is equally divine, with the crispest of skins and a thick fatty layer melting into the flesh. This is authentic stuff involving complex time-consuming steps before the meat is roasted in a special round oven. The kitchen also produces a few dim sum bites (char siu bao, pork and prawn siu mai etc), as well as lo mein noodles and some family-style dishes. The flavours could be ramped up a notch, but there’s no arguing with the craft that goes into these dishes. Service is warm and open, while drinks run from fresh juices to Brixton-brewed beers. There's a newish branch by St Paul's Cathedral and a more ambitious outpost is due to open in Ealing in September 2024.

A real diamond in the rough, you might easily walk past the unprepossessing front of this Chinese café without realising the delights that await within. However, step inside the tiny DIY-decorated space and grab a chair at the counter overlooking the open kitchen, and you’ll witness magic at work. James Kirk-Gould, formerly head chef at that high-rise 24-hour London restaurant Duck & Waffle, now offers extraordinarily good-value Chinese home cooking in this Birmingham suburb – currently in the sweet spot of gentrification (it's still scruffy and cheap, but there's cool stuff to do and eat here and a palpable sense of community). Kirk-Gould is helped front of house by partner Cassie, whose fudge-making business next door provides the sauce for the soft-serve ice cream that is the café’s only pudding. Eating here feels a bit like having dinner with friends, partly because of the warm welcome but also because the menu is so short that you more or less have to eat what you’re given. If that’s the much-praised fried chicken, served crisp and crunchy in a puddle of chilli oil and Szechuan peppercorns with, say, a side of smacked cucumbers, beaten about and then macerated in lightly spiced sesame oil, you will marvel at the freshness and flavour. The drinks menu, also brief, offers Tsingtao beer, as well as green and chrysanthemum tea if you want to stay authentic. Just like the food, the bill will astonish you for all the right reasons.

Coventry doesn’t make a show of it, but genuine Chinese mainland food can be unearthed in the city. Look for the signs: several ethnic supermarkets in the centre of town; a stall at the indoor market selling esoteric specialities; lots of Chinese students and this unassuming restaurant. As you enter the simple, brightly lit premises, you’ll be immediately convinced (and comforted) that this is no anglicised ‘chicken and cashews' joint. The neon-lit sign is in Chinese script, as is much of the voluminous menu. Tables are easy-wipe, there's no alcohol licence and the dining room is populated by a young crowd. Even if you're au fait with the intricacies of authentic Chinese food, you may need a few minutes to get to grips with the huge menu. Szechuan cuisine dominates, and many of the dishes come topped with a forbidding layer of dried red chillies and chilli oil. Numbing Szechuan peppercorns further assault the tongue in impressively huge concoctions such as ‘Szechuan-style pig’s red, with hairy belly’ (the enigmatic translation adding to the allure). Here, beneath the fiery, oily surface you’ll find rectangles of shiny blood pudding, segments of springy beef tripe, tantalisingly resilient black fungus, and… slices of Spam. Yet there’s also plenty of opportunity to savour food that's gentler on the palate: an appetisingly seasoned plate of fried noodles with seafood, perhaps, or thin slices of highly savoury belly pork on a bed of pickled vegetables. At inspection, the standout dish was a generous bowlful of pork dumplings, their delicate wrappers submerged in a flavourful chilli-hot broth, with Chinese cabbage providing relief from the heat. Order steamed rice (not, as far as we could discern, on the menu) to counteract the ferocious spicing. Staff are admirably patient with newcomers, while pricing is moderate (given the gargantuan portions).