Park Chinois

The Verdict

Park Chinois is one of the few Chinese restaurants in London where the room is as deliberate as the food. At ££££ pricing, it sits comfortably alongside Mayfair's top-tier dining, for a specific occasion profile (late-night glamour, celebrations, a group that wants spectacle alongside serious cooking), it is hard to beat in its category. If your priority is purely technical Chinese cuisine without the showmanship, Hakkasan Mayfair or Imperial Treasure offer a sharper focus. But if you want Chinese cooking delivered inside one of London's most dramatically designed dining rooms, with late-night hours that extend to 2 am Thursday through Saturday, Park Chinois earns its place on the shortlist.

Portrait

Park Chinois has been operating at 17 Berkeley Street since 2015, which means it has now spent a decade as one of Mayfair's most unapologetically theatrical dining rooms. The space takes clear cues from 1930s Shanghai glamour: lacquered panels, deep reds and golds, theatrical lighting, a room layout that feels designed for occasions rather than quiet Tuesday nights. This is not a room for blending in. The scale of the space gives it an energy that smaller, more restrained Chinese restaurants in London cannot replicate, for a diner who wants their surroundings to match the occasion, that physical boldness is a genuine asset.

The kitchen operates under chef Kin Min How, the menu reads as a broad survey of regional Chinese cooking rather than a single-province focus. That breadth is worth understanding before you book. If you are looking for the specialist depth of, say, BarshuSichuan focus or the no-menu intimacy of Hunan, this is a different proposition. Park Chinois is closer in spirit to a grand Chinese brasserie: ambitious in scope, confident in execution, built to handle a wide range of preferences across a large table.

The awards record is telling. Opinionated About Dining, which tracks classical European dining with precision, has ranked Park Chinois in its Classical in Europe list for three consecutive years, moving from a Recommended listing in 2023 to #275 in 2024 and #346 in 2025. It also holds a Michelin Plate for 2024 and 2025, which signals consistent cooking without the fanfare of a star. The OAD ranking is the more interesting signal here: it places Park Chinois in a European context where it is being measured against far more minimalist, technique-driven rooms. That it holds its position in that company speaks to the kitchen's consistency even if the venue's identity is rooted in atmosphere as much as plate work.

Saturday and Sunday lunch service (noon to 3 pm) is worth particular attention. The midweek set lunch offers value that is difficult to find elsewhere at this price tier in Mayfair. For a food-focused explorer who wants to experience the room and the cooking without a full dinner spend, that lunch window is the most efficient entry point. Dinner runs later than almost any other Chinese restaurant in London at this level, with Thursday, Friday, Saturday service going to 2 am, which makes it a credible option for post-theatre or late-night dining in a way that Four Seasons or Imperial Treasure cannot match on hours alone.

For context across the UK's broader high-end dining scene, Park Chinois occupies a distinct niche. The destination restaurants making headlines outside London, including The Fat Duck in Bray, L'Enclume in Cartmel, and Moor Hall in Aughton, are offering tasting-menu precision in rural or semi-rural settings. Park Chinois is doing something structurally different: it is putting Chinese cuisine inside a Mayfair context that usually belongs to French and Modern British cooking, doing so with a confidence that has sustained a decade of operation. If you want to see how that compares internationally, Restaurant Tim Raue in Berlin and Mister Jiu's in San Francisco represent similarly ambitious attempts to bring Chinese cooking into fine dining formats outside China, each with a very different execution.

The review corpus suggests the atmosphere consistently lands; the occasional dissatisfaction tends to cluster around service pace or bill size rather than food quality. That pattern is worth knowing: this is a venue where managing expectations on spend and pacing will determine your experience.

Explore More in London

For more options across the city, see our full London restaurants guide, our full London hotels guide, our full London bars guide, our full London wineries guide, and our full London experiences guide. Beyond London, Gidleigh Park in Chagford, Hand and Flowers in Marlow, and hide and fox in Saltwood are worth adding to your UK dining shortlist.