Andrew Wong opens a tasting menu built on Chinese textures
The two-Michelin-starred chef reopens his Pimlico dining room with a show kitchen and a menu built entirely around the textures of Chinese cooking.
Andrew Wong is putting the textures that define Chinese cooking at the centre of a new tasting menu, Collections of China, opening this month at his two-Michelin-starred A. Wong in Pimlico.
The menu builds around contrasts long prized in Chinese kitchens: the collagen-rich give of slow-cooked sea cucumber, the elastic snap of hand-pulled noodles, and the controlled crunch of batters and skins. Wong frames those qualities as deliberate technique rather than exotic flourish, tracing them through regional practice before showing how they translate into his own contemporary courses.
"The menu puts particular emphasis on texture, from the soft, yielding mouthfeel of collagen-rich ingredients such as sea cucumber to the elastic resistance known as 'Q' in hand-pulled noodles," Wong said of the new format.
Two tasting menus, one argument: Chinese cooking is technique, not translation.
A two-month rebuild behind it
The launch follows a two-month refurbishment of the Wilton Road dining room, which reopens with a redesigned floor and a show kitchen visible from the entrance. Guests will be able to watch dough being pulled and dumplings folded before dishes reach the table, a change Wong has pushed for since the restaurant's last major overhaul.
A. Wong keeps its existing tasting menu on the books too, now renamed Collections of A. Wong, alongside the à la carte dim sum service that runs through lunch. The restaurant, which Wong opened with his parents in 2012 on the site of their family dim sum house, has held two Michelin stars since 2017.
Wong has spent the years since building out that technical case in public, publishing A. Wong: The Cookbook with full breakdowns of dumpling wrappers, hand-pulled noodles and barbecue pork buns rather than keeping them as kitchen secrets, the same instinct behind our own Dishoom black daal recipe.
Technique over translation
Running two tasting menus side by side lets A. Wong separate its dim sum repertoire, the dishes most diners associate with the address, from a format built to explain how Chinese cooking actually works. It is a distinction British dining has been slow to make, where regional technique is still often flattened into a single idea of "Chinese food."
Collections of China opens to bookings later this month, running alongside the restaurant's existing menus rather than replacing them.
