A corner pub that first opened its doors in 1792 becomes an all-day Chinese kitchen from the chef behind A. Wong and a co-founder of Dishoom, anchoring a cobbled quarter between Shoreditch and the City.
A pub has stood on the corner at Norton Folgate since 1792, trading over the years as the Pewter Platter, The Poet and the Water Poet. Its next name is Kong. Due to open in autumn 2026, it is a Chinese public house from Andrew Wong and Amar Radia, and the anchor restaurant of British Land’s Norton Folgate quarter, where Shoreditch, Spitalfields and the City meet.
Two histories under one roof
The founders build Kong around a coincidence of dates. British Land places the pub’s first opening in 1792, at the time the first Chinese settlers arrived in East London, and Radia points out that the grand East London pub and the Chinese kitchen have both been part of the city for more than two hundred years. Kong sets out to put the two traditions in one building.
The plan follows a pub’s rhythm rather than a restaurant’s. The published outline is a day in three parts: dumplings in the morning, noodles at lunch and grills with a cold pint at dusk. That makes Kong somewhere to walk into at any hour, which is how a public house has always worked, and a very different proposition from a table booked weeks ahead.
From Victoria to the East End
Andrew Wong made his name in another kind of room. A. Wong, at 70 Wilton Road in Victoria, holds two stars in the 2026 Michelin Guide. Wong took over the restaurant from his parents in 2012 and opened it with his wife, Nathalie; the A honours his parents, Albert and Annie. Its evening menu, Collections of China, runs to 30 courses over about three hours, each sequence devoted to a different region.
Kong asks something else of that knowledge. Wong describes the new kitchen as shaped by London, the East End, China and A. Wong, and as all-day cooking. The research behind a 30-course menu now has to reach a pub table as a bowl of noodles or a plate from the grill, and how well it makes that journey will be the real measure of the opening.
A Dishoom reunion
Amar Radia is a co-founder of Dishoom. The design and interiors at Kong are by Afroditi Krassa, whose studio was founded in 2002 and designed both Dishoom and itsu. The partnership brings a Dishoom founder and the designer behind Dishoom’s interiors together again, this time in a corner pub with more than two centuries of trade behind it.
The scale is generous for the quarter. Kong takes just under 6,000 square feet on a new 20-year lease, with an 800 square foot courtyard. The first two restaurants British Land signed at Norton Folgate, in 2024, took 2,700 and 1,650 square feet on Blossom Street, so Kong is more than twice the size of the larger of them.
A quarter of cobbled yards
Norton Folgate gives the pub a setting with its own depth. British Land’s 330,000 square foot scheme is made up of six buildings, Georgian and Victorian houses and warehouses set around cobbled courtyards, and four architects worked on it: AHMM, Stanton Williams, Morris + Company and DSDHA. Folgate Street was once White Lion Street, lined with houses built from the 1720s, when Spitalfields was becoming a centre of silk manufacture.
The courtyard is the detail to watch. Eight hundred square feet of open air, inside a quarter already arranged around yards, gives Kong room to take the day outdoors when the weather allows. It is a short walk from Liverpool Street and Shoreditch High Street stations, close enough to the City for lunch and to Shoreditch for the evening, which suits a kitchen planned to run from the first dumpling to the last pint.