In the past, the Chinese food scene in UK had mainly settled into a pattern of Cantonese dishes adapted to British tastes. Historically, the first Chinese eating houses in Britain weren’t aimed at local customers at all, but at Chinese sailors who had settled around the docks in London’s Limehouse, Liverpool and other cities in the 19th century. The country’s small Chinese population grew in the early 20th century when a new trickle of students joined the original settlers. It was only when Chinese restaurants started opening in central London that they began to win the affections of customers who were not Chinese.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new wave of Cantonese immigrants from Hong Kong arrived, followed in the 1970s by thousands of ethnic Chinese refugees from Vietnam: many ended up in catering. In the 1960s, clusters of Chinese restaurants appeared around Gerrard Street in central London and in central Manchester, both of which quickly became established as their cities’ Chinatowns. The old Limehouse Chinatown, largely destroyed by wartime bombing, sputtered out as Chinese restaurateurs focused their energies on Soho. In the late 1990s, Chinese restaurants and takeaways were a fixture across the country. Most specialised in the lightly flavoured cuisine of the Cantonese south: dim sum, roast ducks and barbecued meats that hung enticingly in restaurant windows, steamed seafood, stir-fried vegetables and claypot stews. Many Britons preferred dishes adapted to their tastes: crispy duck, sweet and sour pork and egg fried rice. More interesting delicacies were hidden away on Chinese-language menus. There was little to challenge the Cantonese dominance of the trade. Restaurants were mostly Cantonese-run, as were the importers and sellers of ingredients. Zingy Sichuan pepper and earthy Pixian chilli bean paste were nowhere to be found. Cantonese was the language of Chinatown: hardly anyone spoke fluent Mandarin.
Over the past two decades, there has been a revolution in Chinese food in Britain, driven by the waves of China’s emergence as a new cultural and political force in the world. The old Cantonese guard have mostly retired from the catering business, their children, educated in the UK, moving into white-collar jobs. Since China began to open up in the early 1990s, a new generation of Chinese people, not only from the Cantonese south but all over the country, have had the chance to explore the world. Immigrants from other regions, particularly south-eastern Fujian province, have come to work in the kitchens of established Chinese restaurants and later to open their own. Students have flocked to British schools and universities, alongside growing numbers of Chinese tourists.
These two forces of a newly diverse population of Chinese restaurant workers and an equally diverse pool of Chinese customers have been equally important in reshaping British Chinese food. In the past, Chinese restaurants could only survive by catering for the British tastes of their time; now, particularly in university cities, they have a substantial market of recent arrivals from China. Many of the young people, who want to eat the kind of food they enjoy at home.
In the UK, “Sichuan” was merely used to describe generically spicy dishes on Chinese menus. As the new market economy emerged in China in the 1990s, the restaurant scene, once again erupted into life. With economic revival came an appetite for one of China liveliest and most stimulating cuisines. Sichuanese restaurants and snack shops opened all over the country; dishes such as shuizhuyu and hotpot became wildly fashionable. It was only natural that the new wave of Chinese travellers and immigrants making their way to Britain brought this fashion with them.
Before long, there were Sichuan restaurants in many parts of London, as well as in Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham, Oxford and other cities; even Cantonese restaurants began adding Sichuan dishes to their menus. Spicy Sichuan hotpot, adored throughout China, started to appear in specialist restaurants with tables cut out to hold bubbling cauldrons of chilli-laced broth. The cuisines of Hunan, another chilli-loving province, and the north-eastern region followed in Sichuan’s spicy wake. Many of the new regional restaurants started out with no English-language publicity but simply an eye for attracting Chinese customers, their menus reflecting Chinese more than local culinary fashions. The street food of Xi’an and the great north west has begun to make its mark in London with the opening of Xi’an Impression, Murger Han and Xi’an Biang Biang Noodles.
Late 20th century convention categorized Chinese food into four or eight regional cuisines, but in truth every region, province, city and town has its own specialities. The great south-western province of Yunnan, for example, is an extraordinary patchwork of foods and flavours; even Sichuanese and Cantonese cuisines are still relatively unexplored. Britons’ appetite for new Chinese foods may be boundless. It remains to be seen whether we are at a peak of innovative Chinese cuisine in Britain, or on the brink of a multitude of new discoveries.
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