Henan cuisine opens its first London outpost in Holborn
Restaurateur Tao Xu swaps Pizza Express management and a Hunan kitchen for his home province, opening 20-seat Chi Pot Pot on Boswell Street.
Henan cuisine has its first dedicated London restaurant: Chi Pot Pot, a 20-seat spot that restaurateur Tao Xu opened this week on Boswell Street in Holborn.
Xu, known in the trade as Winston, built the menu around his native province, a region rarely represented on a London Chinese food map dominated by Cantonese, Sichuan and Hunan cooking. Henan sits in central China, along the Yellow River, and its street food leans on wheat rather than rice: hand-pulled noodles, flatbreads and pepper-forward soups rather than the chilli-oil heat more familiar from its southern neighbours.
Henan street food on Boswell Street
I want to find a different way of presenting authentic Chinese food.
The menu runs through Henan's street-food staples: Daokou braised chicken, tofu sheets and crispy egg-filled pancakes sit alongside xiaoyao-style hulatang, a hot and sour pepper soup built on beef. Clay-pot hand-pulled noodles come braised in beef sauce or dropped into a mala or lamb broth, and a rice-noodle version adds chicken leg and mixed mushrooms. Biang biang noodles, the wide hand-slapped ribbons better known from Shaanxi kitchens, appear here with braised beef.
Set menus run under £20 a head; an à la carte dinner for two costs roughly £55 to £75. The restaurant opens daily from 11.30am to 10pm and takes bookings for its 20 covers.
"I want to find a different way of presenting authentic Chinese food," Xu said of the opening.
From pizza chains to a Henan specialist
Xu spent nine years at Pizza Express and Burger King, rising to area manager, before moving into Chinese hospitality. He helped bring Haidilao to Britain, opening the hot pot chain's first UK branch in Holborn in 2019, then joined Soho's Bar Shu as managing director.
In 2024 he opened Fiery Flavors in Surrey Quays, a Hunan specialist, before turning to his own home province for Chi Pot Pot.
London's Chinese dining scene has grown more regionally specific over the past decade, as Sichuan, Hunan and now Henan restaurants stake menus on a single province rather than a generalised repertoire. Chi Pot Pot also lands amid a decade-high wave of London restaurant openings, and the next test is whether Boswell Street can support that specificity through winter.
