The top line: The operator behind high-profile Chinatown restaurants YiQi and The Eight has taken over one of the enclave’s most prominent sites. San Hao is located in the building that was previously home to Wan Chai Corner site at the eastern end of Gerrard Street. The three-storey restaurant is billed as a noodle atelier, with staff preparing noodles and dumplings within an open kitchen visible through the ground-floor window.
On the menu: The owners have teamed up with former Hakkasan and Duddell’s chef Daren Liew to bring a touch of high-end restaurant polish to what is ostensibly a casual, high-volume concept. There is a focus on premium produce, including Berkshire pork, wagyu and even foie gras — unusual territory for a noodle specialist. The menu opens with a selection of small plates that go well beyond the standard. Highlights include tender grilled pork belly dusted with cumin, fennel and chilli; chilled tomatoes flavoured with tangerine peel; and chicken wings infused with the intense flavour of red shrimp. A salted egg salad cream with fine beans - a dish that sounds hopelessly lost in translation - arrives exactly as described, with deep-fried beans coated in a creamy, tangy dressing reminiscent of salad cream. The main event is, of course, the noodles. Options are split between soup dishes, made with thin noodles, and dry-tossed dishes featuring flat, wavy noodles. Standout soups include eight-hour truffle porcini duck broth noodles and a Fujian-style herbal pork shank (pictured below), complete with a comically large bone that is unmanageable with chopsticks. Among the dry options, highlights include crunchy grouper with numbing rattan pepper and peppercorn oil, and a take on Sichuan’s dan dan noodles topped with carefully grilled wagyu beef.
The vibe: The 120-cover space has a modern, clean-lined design. Service is quick-fire, with dishes arriving as they are ready - even if that means noodles landing before small plates.
And another thing: San Hao is yet another example of how legacy Anglo-Chinese restaurants aimed largely at Western tourists are being overtaken by a new wave of mainland Chinese operators targeting a primarily Chinese audience. Offering higher-quality, more regionally focused cooking, these concepts feel as though they could have been lifted directly from the streets of Shanghai or Chengdu. Pitched largely at the student market, specialist noodle restaurants are leading the charge with some already leveraging TikTok and WeChat to expand across the capital, including Noodle & Beer and Kung Fu Noodle. Other hotspots for authentic Chinese noodle concepts include Bloomsbury and the eastern edge of The City.
3 Gerrard Street, London W1D 5PD