Royal China Club

Who Should Book Royal China Club — and When

Royal China Club on Baker Street is the right call if you want serious Cantonese cooking in a room that takes the cuisine seriously, without the chaos of a packed dim sum hall. It works leading for a long weekend lunch with people who actually want to eat — not for a quick bite between meetings. If you are in London for a few days and Cantonese food matters to you, this should be on your list ahead of the more tourist-facing options on Gerrard Street. At a ¥¥¥ price point (roughly mid-to-upper range for London Chinese dining), it sits in a tier where you expect consistency and craft, and it largely delivers both.

The Case for Multiple Visits

Royal China Club rewards repeat visits more than most Chinese restaurants in London because the menu range is genuinely wide. Dim sum at lunch and the à la carte at dinner are different enough experiences that treating them as separate outings makes sense. First-timers should anchor their visit around the dim sum at lunch , this is where the kitchen shows its technical range, and the service pace is more relaxed than dinner. Dishes like har gow and char siu bao are the obvious starting points, but a well-informed order should push further into the steamed and baked selections where the kitchen's control over dough texture and filling balance is more apparent. On a second visit, shift to dinner and work through the roasted meats and wok dishes, which represent a different set of skills from the dim sum kitchen. A third visit, for the committed Cantonese enthusiast, is worth building around the seafood , live tank selections are a fixture of serious Cantonese restaurants at this level, and Royal China Club follows that format.

The Michelin Plate recognition in both 2024 and 2025 confirms this is a kitchen operating at a consistent standard. A Michelin Plate signals cooking quality that Michelin inspectors consider worth noting, without the full star designation , which at this address means reliable execution rather than cutting-edge creativity. That framing is useful: book this for precision and consistency, not for a chef-driven tasting menu experience. If the latter is what you are after, Taian Table in Shanghai offers a more conceptual multi-course format, though it operates in a different city and at a higher price tier.

Practical Context

The restaurant opens daily from noon, closing at 10:30 pm Sunday through Thursday and 11 pm Friday and Saturday. Lunch service is the busiest window, particularly on weekends, when dim sum demand is at its highest. If you are visiting during the week, a Monday or Tuesday lunch gives you the leading chance of a quieter room. Weekend dim sum here books up , booking in advance is advisable, though not difficult. The overall booking difficulty for Royal China Club is rated Easy, which means you should not be scrambling for a table with reasonable lead time.

For explorers interested in how Cantonese cooking compares across cities and formats, Royal China Club sits in useful context alongside venues like The Chairman in Hong Kong and The Eight in Macau , both operating in the heartland of Cantonese cuisine at star level. London cannot replicate that source proximity, but Royal China Club is among the stronger arguments that serious Cantonese technique travels well. Within the broader regional picture, Imperial Treasure Fine Chinese Cuisine in Guangzhou and Chef Tam's Seasons in Macau represent the higher ceiling of what the format can achieve with a Michelin star behind them.

If your interest in Chinese fine dining extends across China itself, 102 House and Xin Rong Ji (West Nanjing Road) in Shanghai offer different takes on premium Chinese dining , the former with a private dining format, the latter with Taizhou-style seafood. For Cantonese specifically within China, Dai Yuet Heen in Nanjing and Ru Yuan in Hangzhou are worth knowing. If you are building an itinerary around Chinese regional cooking, Fu He Hui in Shanghai is the standout for vegetarian Chinese at the highest level, while 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana gives a point of comparison for Italian fine dining at a comparable price tier in Shanghai.

Multi-Visit Strategy: How to Sequence Your Visits

Visit 1 , Weekend Dim Sum Lunch: Book a Saturday or Sunday lunch and build your order around the steamed dim sum selection. This is the clearest test of the kitchen's technique. Arrive at noon to avoid the peak rush and give yourself time to order in rounds rather than all at once.

Visit 2 , Weekday Dinner: Return for dinner on a Thursday or Friday and shift focus to the roasted meats and wok-cooked dishes. The room is quieter on weekdays, which allows for a less hurried pace. This is also the better setting for a business dinner or a small celebration , the atmosphere at dinner reads more formal than lunch without being stiff.

Visit 3 , Seafood-Led Dinner: For the food-focused visitor who has covered dim sum and roasts, the third visit is worth anchoring around the live seafood section of the menu, where preparation method and sourcing matter most at this price point. Ask staff about current seasonal availability rather than defaulting to the printed menu.

For visitors building a broader itinerary, our full Shanghai restaurants guide, Shanghai hotels guide, Shanghai bars guide, Shanghai wineries guide, and Shanghai experiences guide are useful starting points. And for regional cross-referencing on Chinese cuisine, the Xin Rong Ji (Xinyuan South Road) branch in Beijing and Xin Rong Ji in Chengdu are worth adding to your notes.