Poon's at Somerset House

Amy Poon has brought her family's name back to Covent Garden, a few hundred yards from where it last stood. Her parents, Bill and Cecilia Poon, opened Poon's & Co. on Lisle Street in Chinatown in 1973 and Poon's of Covent Garden on King Street three years later; the Covent Garden room won a Michelin star in 1980 and ran until the couple retired. After a Clerkenwell pop-up, a wontoneria and a run of residencies, Amy took the New Wing of Somerset House and opened here on 5 November 2025. The cooking is domestic rather than banqueting Cantonese: claypot rice with the family's wind-dried meats, the slow-cooked broth the menu calls Magic Soup, a Covent Garden roast duck salad that answers the old room directly.

The restaurant seats sixty across two rooms designed with Janet McGlennon Interiors. The first is communal and sociable, the second gathers round an open kitchen, and both are hung with the family's own photographs, books, art and heirlooms rather than the usual restaurant art. Walls are washed a soft terracotta, paper lanterns hang the full height of the arched Georgian windows, and hand-painted panels run between them. A bar serves siu sik, the small eats that open a Chinese meal, and the Summer Terrace opens onto Lancaster Place. The wine list favours cool-climate bottles from family-owned and biodynamic growers, and the cocktails are built on Chinese flavours.

For private events the room to ask about is the drawing room, an olive-green salon seating up to twenty-four beneath painted murals of a dragon and a hunting party, with its own marble chimneypiece and lantern light. The venue takes book launches, readings, masterclasses, wine tastings, cocktail parties, weddings and photo shoots there, seats larger parties in the main restaurant on request, and lets the whole place on exclusive hire. Enquiries go to the events team direct.