Big John isn’t going to be happy
He’s not the only one. Although, it should be noted that the fears relate specifically to full-service Chinese restaurants serving Anglo-Cantonese cuisine (which still dominate in the UK). While Chinese takeaway is often cited as the UK’s favourite takeaway – a jumbo-poll of over 15,000 people carried out last year by research group Best for Britain found that 26% of UK consumers cite it as their first choice – a recent report in The Telegraph suggests that Cantonese restaurants are disappearing fast as more diners migrate to delivery and modern Asian dining formats.
How is that reflected in the data?
Figures show that the number of grams of Chinese food eaten by an average person outside the home has more than halved between 2007 and 2023. According to data from the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, collected by Statista, the amount of Chinese food eaten outside the home peaked at 15g in 2007 and 2008. However, from 2011 to 2014, it dropped to 12g and had fallen to 10g by 2017/18. In 2019/20, as restaurants closed during the Covid pandemic, it fell to 2g. In 2021/22, it stalled at 7g and remained there the following year, fuelling fears that many Chinese restaurants that closed during the pandemic had not reopened.
Is this a reliable measure?
In our view it’s a pretty unhinged way of looking at things – when was the last time you weighed your Chinese takeaway? – but the numbers speak for themselves. Gordon Chong of the British Chinese Society says there are genuine fears about the threat facing Chinese restaurants in the UK. He notes that second-generation Chinese immigrants do not want to run restaurants and takeaways as their parents did, and adds that high rents, employee costs and changing tastes add to the problem. “Canton-style food is truly dying in the UK,” he tells The Telegraph. “The decline is also a systemic general decline of the high street and something the Government should try to help with – rent, rates, employee costs.”
What does this mean for the future of Chinese restaurants on UK high streets?
As Chong notes, many of the challenges facing Chinese restaurants are the same as those facing every other independent operator on the high street, but there are also specific hurdles. The traditional Anglo-Cantonese restaurant feels dated. Restaurant wrote in an analysis of London’s Chinatown back in 2019 that ‘the number of Cantonese restaurants is being reduced with the introduction of more specialist, regional Chinese and pan-Asian places in a bid to attract a broader spectrum of customers’. The reality, though, is that this deterioration isn’t exclusive to Chinatown, it is reflective of a broader decline. In that specific London enclave the problem has been at least partly solved by the introduction of more adventurous types of East Asian cuisine, but that is less likely to work in the regions.
Are there any shoots of growth?
There’s certainly the prospect for some in the branded restaurant space. Curiously, Chinese remains one of the few major cuisines in the UK to not be attached to a nationwide chain. But there are groups that could break that mould. One that is in the ascendancy right now is Three Uncles, the Cantonese roast meats specialist that recently announced plans to open its sixth site in London. Three Uncles was founded by childhood friends and chefs Cheong Yew (Uncle Lim), Pui Sing Tsang (Uncle Sidney) and Mo Kwok (Uncle Mo) in 2019 and launched its first site near Liverpool Street station. Outside of the capital, meanwhile, there’s Mrs Chew’s Chinese Kitchen, which was launched by Singaporean restaurateur Ellen Chew in Birmingham’s Grand Central shopping centre and has since expanded to Westfield London. Then there’s the rise of foodhalls like Bang Bang Oriental in London and Hello Oriental in Manchester, the latter of which is about to open a location within Freight Island, offering another area for expansion in the year’s to come. One thing’s for sure, though, if any concept does build a national presence it won’t be doing so with chicken balls, shredded chilli beef and chips with curry sauce. Sorry, Big John.