China Tang at The Dorchester

China Tang opened beneath The Dorchester in 2005, the creation of the late Sir David Tang, and reaches its dining room down a low-key art-deco stair from Park Lane rather than through the hotel. The look is pre-war Shanghai: lacquered screens, mirrored columns, gilded fretwork and koi murals glowing along the walls, a subterranean glamour that has kept the room in favour with London's fashion and society set for two decades. It marked its twentieth year in 2025 with a refurbishment.

The kitchen has a long reputation for Cantonese cooking done properly, from dim sum through to Peking duck carved at the table. Alongside the restaurant sits The Bar, a 1930s jewel modelled on Sir David's own living room, where a serious cocktail list is poured against leather banquettes, table lamps and Chinese art, with live music through the evening. Regulars have long treated it as somewhere to drink in its own right.

For private events there are three interconnecting dining rooms behind sliding lattice doors, Ping, Pang and Pong, each seating around a dozen and combining for larger groups, while the Library area of the main dining room takes bigger functions of up to eighty. The bar can be taken for parties, and China Tang keeps its own entrance and its own character, a self-contained corner of one of London's grand hotels.