As is well known, On London is a stickler for accuracy. And when I met Amy Poon 14 months ago to report that she was imminently to bring back the legendary name of Poon’s as a Chinese restaurant brand in a Russell Square hotel in Bloomsbury, she and I were both sure we were right. But we were wrong on both counts. The pain of dealing with a massive hotel group’s snail-like bureaucracy killed the project.
But now Poon’s really is back in town in the splendour of the new wing of Somerset House. The menus are printed, the walls covered in stunning modern takes on Chinese murals, the tables, crockery and cutlery are in place. The kitchens have been retrofitted within the restrictions of a listed building (no external ventilation is allowed, so all the kitchen heat has to be cooled and recirculated internally).
So a dream delayed but a dream come true for Poon to give a proper public face to the family name again after running pop-ups and a wonton, sauce and condiment business from a railway arch in Bermondsey.
For those of a certain age, the Poon’s name will bring back happy memories of her parents’ restaurants across the West End, which were very much The Places To Be Seen in the 1980s. But, as Poon says, you can’t rely on that demographic any longer.
“The people who remember Poon’s are beginning to fade and there’s a whole new generation out there who know nothing about us,” she says. “So it’s how to tell the story without being too much an old fogey going, ‘Oh, do you remember what it was like in my day’?”
She is doing that through a romantic melange of homeliness and fun. You won’t come to Poon’s for Peking Duck, Dim Sum or other Chinese classics. There’s no shortage of places on Gerard Street for those. Instead, it’s all about replicating what a Chinese mother would make at home.
“What I will have here is just very simple, very clean and very seasonal,” she says. “Nothing tastes as good as nostalgia, right? It’s just about wholesome, nourishing food. Stuff that makes you sigh with contentment,” she says. “We’re not going for a Michelin star. I’m not my father [who did achieve said recognition].”
Nor does Poon feel the weight of any strictures to be 100 per cent faithful to any Chinese cuisine canon. Growing up in a time when fresh Chinese vegetables were hard to come by, she adapts British produce in season into her own recipes. It’s a reflection of her upbringing, scampering around her parents’ restaurant kitchens by night while attending archetypal English private schools by day. “I grew up between two cultures. And I’m sort of equally comfortable in either.”
The fun parts are dotted around the restaurant, on the walls and on the menu. There are “if you know, you know” jokes on the classical murals painted by a prep school friend: a reclining lobster smoking one her father’s beloved cigars. On the menu, there’s a dish called “The hill that Amy didn’t die on”, described as a “hertiage recipe for sesame prawn ‘toast’.”
She had resisted including this culinary trope because, well, it can be found in every bad Chinese restaurant across the land, but backed down following a lecture from her mother (“Darling, there are things that will pay the bills, pay your rent, pay your staff”) and workshopping an idea with her father to create a heritage version using lardo fat rather than toast. Another dish appearing soon – crispy chilli squid – pays homage to one of London’s most beloved chefs, whose first date with the woman he later married was at Poon’s.
Absent the Chinese classics, the menu brings together the familiar – steamed fish and steamed pork with shrimp paste – along with some intriguing elements of Poon’s homebrew cuisine, such as Magic Soup – “a fortifying broth of granny wisdom to soothe, restore and nourish”. I can vouch for this one. There’s also Siu Yeh, a post-theatre light supper of noodles or pot luck rice.
Poon faced opening day with a mixture of excitement and trepidation: “We’ve had so much love, which is incredible and quite humbling, but at the same time it feels like an awful lot of pressure. You just feel like, God, I can’t mess this up. So that’s the challenge. Don’t mess it up, baby.”
Poons is at New Wing, Somerset House, Lancaster Place, London WC2R 1LA. will be open from Tuesday to Saturday, serving lunch 12:00pm-4:00pm and dinner 5:00pm-10.30pm. Bookings can be made at opentable.co.uk. Photo from Poon’s Gallery.
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