The best restaurants serving Chinese food in Churchill City of London, Westminster London

Similarly to some other reviews I found the food very underwhelming for the price. My husband and I are foodies who have lived in various Asian countries and in now living in London we love to try out new Asian restaurants in the hunt for something unexpected, which is what I had hoped for from Hunan after receiving the cook book. I liked the concept of “we choose the menu for you” and multiple courses as it means that for a special occasion dinner for 2 you can have a Chinese meal with the range of tastes you would expect at a round table family dinner, which otherwise wouldn’t be available. The food felt like all your favourite UK Chinese takeaway restaurant classics from 1997… but just marginally better, and I really Do mean marginally. I got the impression that none of the other diners felt like we did. They seemed very impressed by dishes such as “Chinese dumpling” and “crispy aromatic duck” and “egg fried rice”. They did not mind the over use of shaoxing rice wine and corn flour in many dishes. They did not mind paying £170/head for the privilege of this food. Idid notice that at least in our section of the restaurant there was now a single guest of Easy Asian appearance. Most other diners appeared to be American or form continental Europe. There is no Chinese on the menu and I don’t think the restaurant is catering to people from Asia. This shows in the food, service, music (overly loud remixes of early 00s hits), wine selection. The waiters did not appear knowledgeable about the food providing names such as the ones given above, not providing information about ingredients or regional providence of the dish etc except on one occasion where we were told that the lamb was form the Lake District. Our waiter was very keen to upsell us on wine (we aren’t big drinkers) and repeatedly didn’t listen to requests and questions. The food was so disappointing that at one point I started laughing, and as a result. The Maitre’d came to ask is if everything was ok. I commented that i was disappointed with both the food and the service and the Maitre’d apologised and offered to send for more dishes from the kitchen. I accepted this offer and commented that it would be nice as we had come for my birthday. We were then given some sparkling wine and a copy of the cook book. The additional dishes were similar to the earlier ones. One dish of crispy lamb was reasonable. Two other dishes (maybe black cod in a Chinese vinegar reduction and “pork in a bag”) were actually inedible. The other entirely forgettable. Desert was a choice between the overly sweet apple/banana/toffee fried thing and vanilla ice cream (sounded and looked sickly!) and “red bean pancake, green tea ice cream” - again very disappointing. Ice cream was clearly not made on sight, pancake was overly fried mochi-like rice dough with a prawn toast like sesame finish. There was also a coconut jelly which was ok. The Maitre’d knocked 40% off the bill. I had the impression that they had received this kind of comment before. In summary - I can imagine how when the restaurant opened in the 1980s it was impressive. The concept would have been novel, access to Chinese foods beyond the regular take-away joint would have been extremely limited at this time. But in the last 40+ years (and especially in the last 10) the Asian dining scene in London has exploded. Quality and variety now available in other London boroughs doesn’t seem to have impacted this restaurant in Pimlico- which seemed popular with local residents with a clear affection for what I found to be a truly disappointing dining experience. I would not recommend this restaurant. Save your money and go elsewhere.