With this week's Lunar New Year celebrations in full swing in London, there's undoubtedly a host of fantastic restaurants to frequent for your foodie fix, but for something extra special to mark the occasion, head for the clouds...
Hutong at The Shard sits on Level 33, serving Northern Chinese cuisine and artisan cocktails, expertly crafted at the Shanghai Bar. Serving lunch, dinner and weekend brunch, there are multiple menus to choose from, including a very reasonable £39 set lunch, a full à la carte and several Signature menus. While it's definitely a different league to Chinatown in terms of price, there's a wealth of options catering to different budgets, so there's certainly something to cater for everyone.
We recently stopped by to try the Azalea menu, one of their myriad lunch menus, priced at £72 per person. It begins with a trio of dumplings; a lobster dumpling with Sichaun chilli sauce, yam and pork crispy dumpling and mushroom spinach dumpling. Each bite was delicious - if this was just the intro course, there was excitement for what else was to come. We plumped for the optional extra of the half roast peking duck with pancakes and were certainly glad to do so; quite the juiciest, most tender and flavourful duck we've tried in London. Mains included kung po style fried prawns and fried chicken fillet with Sichaun dried chilli, accompanied by stir-fried string beans with chilli and black truffle fried noodles with seasonal vegetables and fungus. There was more than enough for the two of us and every bite was sensational, flavours and spices harmonising perfectly to create a meal to remember. We finished with a mango pudding, almost panna cotta in style, with fruit salsa; full of fruity flavour but light enough to be the perfect finished,
The quality of the food was beyond delicious, and paired with the incredible views and a fantastic cocktail list, Hutong really is a meal to remember.
