From colourful dim sum to lucky custard buns, here’s where how to celebrate the Year of the Horse in style
Chinese New Year in Chinatown is as much about the food as it is the firecrackers and lion dances. As the Year of the Horse arrived, I headed into the heart of the West End ready to eat my way through the celebrations and dodge the notoriously long restaurant queues.
The streets were buzzing, lanterns glowing overhead and families gathering for reunion meals packed with symbolic dishes promising luck, wealth and longevity. With so many packed-out spots, I planned ahead and discovered two standouts that delivered a lot of flavour.
Plum Valley
Tucked along Gerrard Street, Plum Valley is a family-run restaurant that has been part of Chinatown since the 1980s, blending Cantonese tradition with Sichuan heat. It felt like the perfect place to mark the New Year with friends.
We dived straight into their Chinese New Year menu, starting with a turnip cake studded with Chinese sausage and shrimp that completely surprised me with how flavourful it was.
Then came the highlight: Yee Sang – also known as Yu Sheng – the colourful ‘prosperity salad’ that you toss high in the air while shouting wishes for the year ahead, and it might just have been my favourite salad ever.
I’m sure we didn’t toss it high enough, but that didn’t stop us laughing as strands of vegetables and salmon flew everywhere in the name of prosperity. The ritual felt just as important as the flavour itself – a vibrant mix of shredded vegetables and salmon sashimi coated in sweet plum sauce, finished with crunchy peanuts, sesame seeds and slices of crispy wonton.
We also tucked into a whole sea bass covered in sweet and sour sauce, with its slightly intimidating deep-fried head ceremoniously turned towards me as a gesture of good fortune. There were also longevity noodles for a long life, and a colourful spread of dim sum stuffed with loads of shrimp – and I’m pretty sure I could taste a little bit of truffle in there too.
The dessert, tangerine custard buns, looked so realistic it almost felt wrong to bite into them. Their glossy orange shells symbolise luck and wealth. But inside was the creamiest custard.
If you’re gathering friends or family this Chinese New Year, Plum Valley’s festive menu is designed for exactly that. It’s celebratory, theatrical and full of dishes that mean something as well as taste incredible.
Sakurado
Just a short stroll away is Sakurado, which translates to ‘House of the Cherry Blossoms’. Since launching in 2017, the patisserie has brought the elegance of modern Japanese technique to London with beautifully crafted, delicately balanced cakes.
For Chinese New Year, their display was filled with limited-edition treats including Year of the Horse ‘lucky parcels,’ chewy matcha mochi cookies decorated with gold coins and traditional Nian Gao, a sticky rice cake. It’s the kind of place you visit when you want your festive desserts to double as gifts.
The Horse cake itself was pure indulgence – layers of cream wrapped in a thin crêpe with soft chocolate sponge beneath, rich but not overwhelming. Their cinnamon Nian Gao was satisfyingly sticky and comforting, a sweet nod to the glutinous rice cake families exchange in the hope of a prosperous year ahead.
If you’re looking for something a little different to bring to a reunion dinner, Sakurado’s limited-edition creations make the perfect present.
Between tossing salads for prosperity and biting into tangerine-shaped buns, this is how I’d recommend celebrating Chinese New Year in Chinatown.
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