Lee Ho Fook was a

Chinese restaurant A Chinese restaurant is an establishment that serves a Chinese cuisine. Most of them are in the Cantonese cuisine, Cantonese style, due to the history of the Overseas Chinese, Chinese diaspora and adapted to local taste preferences, as in t ...

located in

Chinatown, London Chinatown is an ethnic enclave in the City of Westminster, London, bordering Soho to its north and west, Theatreland to the south and east. The enclave currently occupies the area in and around Gerrard Street. It contains a number of Chin ...

at 15–16 Gerrard Street. It was previously located at 4 Macclesfield Street. In 1974, it became the first Chinese restaurant in the United Kingdom to be awarded a

Michelin Star The Michelin Guides ( ) are a series of guide books that have been published by the French tyre company Michelin since 1900. The Guide awards up to three Michelin stars for excellence to a select few establishments. The acquisition or loss of a ...

. The restaurant was referenced in the lyrics of 1978 song "

Werewolves of London "Werewolves of London" is a rock song performed by American singer-songwriter Warren Zevon. It was composed by Zevon, LeRoy Marinell and Waddy Wachtel and was included on ''Excitable Boy'' (1978), Zevon's third solo album. The track featured Fl ...

" by

Warren Zevon Warren William Zevon (; January 24, 1947 – September 7, 2003) was an American rock singer, songwriter, and musician. Zevon's most famous compositions include "Werewolves of London", "Lawyers, Guns and Money", and " Roland the Headless Tho ...

. Lee Ho Fook closed in 2008, being replaced by another restaurant called Golden Harvest. That was then replaced by Dumplings' Legend, which specialises in soup-filled dumplings.

Reviews

A 1968 review of Lee Ho Fook in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' described it as "undoubtedly one of the best new Cantonese restaurants in London". One of the three owners of the restaurant, Vincent Tsui told ''The Times'' that initially they had not expected their cooking to appeal to English people but found that they had come regularly and that "We're not going to make any concessions". A small card with the Chinese names of dishes to present to waiters was given to customers who only spoke English. The 1969 edition of ''

The Good Food Guide ''The Good Food Guide'' has been reviewing the best restaurants, pubs and cafés in Great Britain since 1951. In October 2021, Adam Hyman purchased ''The Good Food Guide'' for an undisclosed sum from Waitrose & Partners. The ''Guide'' is being r ...

'' praised Lee Ho Fook's "strikingly individual cooking" as "the work of an artist". William F. Heintz called it "one of the top places to dine in all of London" in a review for ''The Chinese-American News Magazine'' in 1974. A 1978 review for the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' stated that the food was "quite good … though it should be characterized as Chinese food for Westerners" and praised the "sweet and sour pork, beef stir‐fried with peppers and onions, chicken soup with egg drops" and "Cantonese staple" crabmeat soup with corn. The decor was described as "a mishmash of Chinese restaurant clichés—panels embossed with dragons, lanterns, woven bamboo, and with rather cramped seating". The waiting service was described as "virtually non-existent".

In culture

In the book ''Dubious Gastronomy: The Cultural Politics of Eating Asian in the USA'' Robert Ji-Song Ku wrote that Zevon's reference to Lee Ho Fook in the song "Werewolves of London" was emblematic of his perception of the ubiquity of Chinese food in the daily life of British people. The writer and novelist

Will Self William Woodard Self (born 26 September 1961) is an English author, journalist, political commentator and broadcaster. He has written 11 novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas and nine collections of non-fiction writing. Sel ...

wrote that he was a fan of Lee Ho Fook for the fact that it was mentioned in Zevon's song. The comedian and writer

Rich Hall Richard Travis Hall (born June 10, 1954) is an American comedian, writer, documentary maker and musician, first coming to prominence as a sketch comedian in the 1980s. He wrote and performed for a range of American networks, in series such as ...

imagined dining at the restaurant as a werewolf in his 2010 short story collection ''Magnificent Bastards''.

References

{{Restaurants in London 1960s establishments in England Chinese restaurants in London Defunct Chinese restaurants Defunct restaurants in London Soho, London