Exploring London's Chinatown

Chinatowns are my home away from home

A Swiss roll flavored with strawberry, mango, and pandan.

Earlier this summer (because it still feels like summer even well into September!), I visited London for about a week. The air was so comfortably cool and breezy, hovering just under 70 degrees, and daylight stretched past 9pm. I’m now convinced summer is the best month to visit the British Isles in general.

I was on a mission to do just three things: see great art, visit independent bookshops, and eat great food. The only problem was that I came down with a terrible virus right when I arrived (thankfully not Covid). Nevertheless, I downed tons of cold medicine and remained determined to enjoy the city as much as I could.

The last time I spent a significant amount of time in the UK was when I studied abroad at Oxford with my friends. I still remember eagerly waiting on London’s bustling Marylebone Road for the double-decker bus that would take me to the heart of Oxford, to the house full of staircases and library stacks that would be our home that spring. With the gift card to Blackwell’s Bookshop that my roommate back at college had given me when we said good-bye, I bought my first Virginia Woolf books to inaugurate my new adventure. There was so much to explore in Oxford alone, so I didn’t find myself in London as much. Plus, our tutorials were notoriously demanding, making any free day when we could take a trip to London all that more rare and exciting. At that time, we mostly went to London because our program bought us tickets to see plays, but I never really got to explore it much on my own like I did on this trip.

For one, I saw some breathtaking Joan Mitchell paintings at the Tate Modern and rushed into the National Gallery before it closed to see the Turners (the second time I’ve done that, so maybe this is becoming a tradition).

I also got to explore Chinatown a lot more this time than ever before and got so much inspiration for recipes to recreate back home! After being away from a Chinatown in general for months, it was so nice to finally speak Cantonese again, a lingua franca that has served me well in every Chinatown I’ve been to.

I ducked into a bakery one day and ordered my favorite food: dau6 fu6 faa1 (a soup of big, soft slabs of silken tofu drizzled with a ginger-honey syrup, usually served hot or room temperature). I devoured it immediately right outside the storefront.

My partner and I ate almost every dinner in Chinatown, and the meals did not disappoint. At Wong Kei, we got ong choy stir-fried with shrimp paste that had the perfect amount of wok hei.

At Cafe TPT, which specializes in dai pai dong food, we had some classic dishes that were so excellently done — 椒盐鲜鱿 (salt and pepper squid, ziu1 jim4 sin1 yau4) and string beans stir-fried in a delectable black bean sauce.

There’s nothing like eating these steaming-hot dishes as it rains outside on the cobblestone streets and rushing into a bakery just before closing to get baos for the next morning. Some waiters and restaurant owners asked about me and where my family was from, and I was encouraged by how similar the stories of our Chinatowns and our families were. I’ve lived in quite a few places at this point in my life, and have learned that it is true that a rolling stone gathers no moss, but it is comforting to remember that Chinatown is not a singular place, that around the world it is the home and the haven for so many others that it is for me, the subject that often sparks conversation between me and other strangers. Small businesses and neighborhoods rise and fall over time, and no one can predict what Chinatowns around the world will look like decades from now, but in the mean time, I’m so grateful for what they mean to me.

Until next time,

Shannon