A. Wong reopens on Wilton Road after a summer away

For six weeks this summer, Andrew Wong cooked in a room beside the Atrium Restaurant at Mandarin Oriental Mayfair. His own restaurant, A. Wong, was closed for a refurbishment at 70 Wilton Road, where Victoria meets Pimlico. It has since reopened, reportedly on 10 October, with a smaller dining room and a kitchen you can see from the door.

The hotel announced the residency in July. From 18 August, Wong and his team served dinner only, with both the signature and the vegetarian Collections of China, the tasting menus that won A. Wong its two Michelin stars. The hotel called it a temporary move while the Pimlico restaurant was refurbished.

Wong took the restaurant over from his parents in 2012 and opened it as A. Wong with his wife, Nathalie. The A is for Albert and Annie, who ran it before him.

A new kitchen and dining room

Reports of the reopening describe a glass panel at reception that looks straight into the kitchen. The kitchen was rebuilt so the brigade can move around it more easily. The dining room is smaller, at about 32 covers against 38 before, and a private room for 12 sits to the right of the entrance.

Michaelis Boyd redesigned the room. It now has banquettes in twilight-blue velvet, art nouveau chairs in honey gold, dark walnut floors and pale jade tiles. A five-panel mural by the French artist Claire Basler runs along one wall.

The Collections of China

The dinner menu runs to about 30 dishes over around three hours, served in movements. Each movement is a group of dishes from one region of China, and together they cross the country’s 14 international borders and its five flavours: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and spice. The new version is reported to draw on Wong’s research in Beijing and Shanghai, with a whole turbot steamed with pickled chilli among its dishes.

Wong calls himself a chef, anthropologist and cultural observer. With Dr Mukta Das of the SOAS Food Studies Centre, he reads old Chinese recipes from a cook’s point of view and brings what they find to the menu. At lunch, a crab claw with tomato and wasabi is dated to the Zhou dynasty, and “Memories of Peking duck” comes with seared foie gras.

Dim sum and the Forbidden City Bar

Lunch follows the Hong Kong habit of dim sum, ordered by the piece or as a tasting menu with paired drinks, alcoholic or not. The chef’s counter faces the kitchen pass and seats two, which makes it the place to watch the rebuilt kitchen at work.

Downstairs, the Forbidden City Bar opens in the evenings and takes guests who are not dining. Its small plates come from Wong’s favourite childhood dishes and the food of old Hong Kong. The Collections of China takes around three hours, so the restaurant advises against booking it before the theatre.

Dinner from Tuesday to Saturday, 17:30 to 22:30; lunch from Wednesday to Saturday, 12:00 to 14:30. Dim sum at lunch from £4.50 a piece.

A. Wong, 70 Wilton Road, Pimlico, London SW1V 1DE.