A drum oven of the kind Hong Kong’s roast shops use and two char siu, one of them Wagyu short rib, make the chef’s first cooking in Britain at The Peninsula London’s noodle bar.
The oven in Little Blue Noodle Bar this month is a vertical Apollo drum, the kind that hangs roast pork in Hong Kong’s neighbourhood shops. May Chow brought the method with her. The Hong Kong chef behind Little Bao is cooking in Britain for the first time, in a 25-seat bar at The Peninsula London.
May Chow and Little Bao
Chow’s residency began on 5 October and runs until 1 November. Little Blue sits beside Canton Blue, the hotel’s Cantonese restaurant, behind cobalt-lacquered doors that open straight onto Grosvenor Crescent. It was built for noodles and pints of Gweilo, a Hong Kong beer, so the bar already looked east before she arrived.
Little Bao opened in Hong Kong in 2013. The Cantonese gastropub Second Draft came after it, and then Happy Paradise, which The Peninsula calls her love letter to Chinese cuisine. She is the youngest chef to have won the Asia’s Best Female Chef award, and she sits on the board of the EAT Forum.
Her menu here is about Hong Kong as a city of arrivals. Chiu Chow traders, Shanghainese incomers and a Cantonese diaspora carried its food abroad and brought new flavours home. The residency was made with the culinary agency Tribe & Gather, with support from the Hong Kong Tourism Board and Cathay Pacific.
Char siu from a drum oven
The centre of the menu is siu mei, Cantonese roasting. British meats are air-dried, roasted at high heat and finished in layers of glaze. Tamworth pork collar char siu is marinated in red fermented bean curd, red yeast rice and Mei Kuei Lu rose wine, then glazed with maltose.
The second char siu is made only for the residency. It is Wagyu short rib, with black fermented bean, five spice, aged tangerine peel, peanut and honey, and it is the richer of the two.
Sharing plates come around the roasts. There is raw scallop with cucumber, coriander and green peppercorn, salt marsh lamb tartare with fermented bean curd and pickled mustard greens, crispy cuttlefish with seaweed and black garlic, and sand ginger fried chicken.
Noodles, oolong ice cream and lemon tea
The King Prawn and Peanut Braised Noodles were created for the takeover. Fresh egg noodles are wok-braised with king prawns, ginger and yellow chives, then finished with a sesame and peanut dressing and a chilli oil made from the prawn heads. Crab fried rice with ginger and roasted sesame oil sits beside it.
Dessert is an ice cream of Ya Shi Xiang Dan Cong oolong, a tea grown for its floral scent, with hot, crisp apple mochi. At the bar, a Hong Kong lemon tea is made with Bison vodka, black tea, lemon and sweet soy. The wines and sakes come from small producers, picked to stand up to fermentation and salt in Cantonese food.
Chow has set the room for eating and drinking at the same time, with music, a fast pace and an à la carte menu.
May Chow at Little Blue Noodle Bar runs from 5 October to 1 November 2026: Monday to Wednesday and Sunday from 12:00 to 23:00, Thursday to Saturday from 12:00 to 00:00, with food orders until 22:00.
Little Blue Noodle Bar, The Peninsula London, 1 Grosvenor Place, London SW1X 7HJ, entered from Grosvenor Crescent.
Discover more at peninsula.com