Housed within the New Wing of Somerset House, Poon’s at Somerset House will seat 60 and will offer a menu that will ‘reflect dishes cooked and served in Chinese homes daily, yet are often unfamiliar in the West’.
Poon - the daughter of acclaimed Chinese chef-restaurateur Bill Poon - has been looking to bring her family’s iconic Cantonese restaurant brand back to the capital in permanent form for some time.
In 2018, she launched a successful pop-up in Clerkenwell.
It is understood that Poon was close to launching a permanent restaurant around this time, but the project was derailed by the pandemic.
During Covid, she launched Wontoneria at Stevie Parle’s JOY restaurant in Notting Hill and later brought it to Carousel’s incubator space No. 23 Charlotte Street.
Last year, Poon opened a production and retail space in South London’s Spa Terminus.
The site serves as a hub for Poon’s London’s significant wholesale trading and production activities - the brand produces products including wind-dried meats, soy sauce and vinegars - and serves wontons at the weekend.
Located on the Waterloo Bridge side of Somerset House, the restaurant is billed as an evolution of the original Poon’s restaurants rather than a replication.
Menu details are limited, but options will include signature claypot rice and ‘magic soup’.
The wine list will focus on cool-climate wines, championing family-owned producers and celebrating biodynamic practices and female winemakers.
Alongside this will be a cocktail list that plays on unexpected Chinese flavours.
The space has been designed in collaboration with designer Janet McGlennon Interiors.
Design features will include an open kitchen, informal communal table and art, photos and other decorative objects from the family’s collection.
“Since my first pop-up in 2018, I’ve been searching for a space to call home. After various false starts, I could not have hoped for a more beautiful location than Somerset House,” Poons says.
“Five decades after my parents opened the first Poon’s Restaurant in Lisle Street, I can no longer deny the calling. This is a way of welcoming people to my table, where you come if you don’t have a nice Chinese friend who will cook for you at home.”
Bill and Cecilia Poon opened their first Poon’s restaurant in 1973 on Chinatown’s Lisle Street.
Three years later, Poon’s of Covent Garden was launched and later became the first Chinese restaurant in the UK to be awarded a Michelin star.
The business grew to seven location in its 1980s heyday, including a restaurant in Switzerland. The pair retired in 2006.