Michelin-starred restaurants can be terrible, claustrophobic places. Fussy food, tedious customers and over-bearing staff, desperate to explain exactly why the hand-dived scallops are so dear to the chef’s heart. Two-starred places (not that I’ve been to many) can be even worse, with hushed dining rooms that appear more like sites of religious veneration than restaurants. How lucky - how blessed - you are, benighted gourmand, to be allowed to look upon the miracle split dill oil reduction.
Consistently present at A Wong is evidence of boundary-breaking imagination
To the uninitiated, A Wong sounds dangerously like one of those places. It’s basically in Chelsea, for a start. People talk about how clever and cutting-edge and creative the dishes (called things like ‘memories of Peking Duck’) are. Finally, it’s a question of ‘when, not if’ the restaurant wins a third star. These are all factors (along with Michelin-level pricing) that should set alarm bells ringing.
It’s testament to A Wong’s quality that it incorporates all these things (including gratuitous table-side dish exposition) yet manages to still impress relentlessly. We were carpet bombed with a pan-Chinese menu of about 30 dishes, organised into six courses, and the effect was culinary shock and awe. In the open-front kitchen, marshalling the assault with a pencil tucked behind his ear, was Andrew Wong himself, a reassuring sight when you consider how few big-name chefs put in a literal shift these days. Although, to be honest, I couldn’t see his hands, so he might have been doing a crossword.
On the strength of these dishes the crossword hypothesis is unlikely. Was it all perfect? No, but there were 30 dishes. No one’s ever produced 30 perfect anythings in a row. Not even the Beatles (chronologically speaking ‘Across the Universe’ and ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’ were interrupted by ‘Hey Bulldog’). Consistently present at A Wong however, was evidence of boundary-breaking imagination. The south-eastern staple of fish-fragrant aubergine has been successfully reimagined as a pair of fiery ‘scorched’ oysters. Shanghai’s most famous dumpling, the xiao long bao, is now translucent and inside out, injected with a healthy glug of ginger-infused vinegar dipping sauce and given a crown of marinated fish roe. The aforementioned recollections of duck, somehow does what its name suggests, with the concentrated, emotional essence of the Beijing delicacy, focused like enriched uranium into a rod-like tube. Much like with the chef’s almost-namesake Willy Wonka, in this world ‘delicious’ isn’t enough. It’s got to also be quite weird.
The hits (albeit remixed by an avant-garde epicure) keep coming. Cumin-coated lamb, usually found in rough and ready dishes from Xinjiang, comes lounging on a bed of fruity tomato, afloat on a cooling pool of herb-y buttermilk. Two solid-gold Canto classics, shumai and har gow, appear as a fashion-forward duo, the first topped with (among other things) a texturally satisfying beret of crackling, the latter carrying a show-stopping blob of rice vinegar foam. Meanwhile a marinated scallop arrives accompanied by a crab claw stuffed with a sweet-and-salty mousse, augmented with a shock of crunchy orange noodles which waver skyward like alien moss on a deep-sea monstrosity. The cheung fun, featuring rose-infused char sui and sheets of filo pastry, resembles an aggressively post-modern sandwich that shatters in your mouth.
Would it be patronising to say that despite all the foody fireworks, the most impressive thing about A Wong is its carefully and lovingly maintained sense of normality? The venue feels like a Cantonese restaurant from back in the day. And that’s exactly what it was; owned by Wong’s parents and where he and his sister worked while growing up. Aside from a few really boujee touches (such as tables made out of tree trunks) it’s hard to imagine much has changed about the dining room, indeed anyone who ate Chinese food in London throughout the 1980s and 1990s will recognise an intangible atmosphere that descends on you like a familiar cloak.
London has lots of restaurants that are among the best in the world. And in A Wong it has one that couldn’t exist anywhere else on Earth.
The vibe Shockingly creative Michelin-starred innovation, created and served in a beautifully legit old-school Cantonese restaurant.
The food The Collection of China is a six-course 30-dish tasting menu epic. Andrew Wong turns Chinese cooking inside out (sometimes literally), but never loses sight of its central tenets. You can order off the menu like a normal person too if you like, but only at lunch.
The drink We had a wine pairing, but still found room to sneak in a couple of Tsingtao beers.
Time Out tip It’s a double-Michelin starred meal that costs more than £200 so don’t have a big lunch.