Last Updated on March 23, 2025
Cantonese New Wave Cuisine comes to Fitzrovia
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
When I was younger, going ‘for a Chinese’, meant eating Cantonese food from Southern China and often the Hong Kong variant of that cuisine. As with all immigrant cooking styles, the food evolved its own identity in the UK because of limited access to authentic ingredients and the conservatism of the British palate. Dishes such as sweet and sour pork, prawn toast, chicken chow mein and crispy seaweed became established as menu staples that became both standardised and incredibly popular. How does a restaurant like The Three Gorges fit here?
The old wave of Chinese restaurants is dying out as the children of these culinary pioneers step away from the kitchen and counter into professional jobs. What is also emerging is a trend for authentic regional Chinese food with new Hunanese, Dongbei, Xi’an, Yunnanese, and Sichuanese restaurants flying the foodie flag for their regions. Now we have the opening of Thre Gorges, an eighty-cover, three-floor high-end Cantonese and Hubei restaurant in Fitzrovia’s Goodge St. which we are delighted to review.
The Three Gorges is part of a small group of regional Chinese restaurants founded by Miss Li Zhang, who also has three branches of the Sichuan-inspired Sanxia Renjia restaurant in Fitzrovia, Bromley and Kingston. In the kitchen is Chef Qian from Jiangsu whose CV includes 10 years with the Hakkasan Group.
The Three Gorges is named after the scenic Qutang, Wu, and Xiling gorges on the Yangtze River. The area was turned into the largest dam in the world by the Chinese government in the mid-1990s. It’s a long way from the urban bustle of Goodge St, so we gave up contemplating issues relating to hydroelectricity and started our investigations of the intriguing-looking menu, helped along by the brioche notes of a glass of Gaston Chiquet Premier Cru Tradition Brut NV. Alongside the fizz offering, the drinks menu has some well-priced wines, classic cocktails and a short list of premium whiskies.
The menu is pitched at the luxe end of the market with starters ranging from £14 -£26, mains £18 – £68, side dishes £16 – £30 and desserts around the £8 mark. There is also a soup menu that includes the energetic-sounding Buddha Jumps over the Wall at £38 and a duck menu featuring the Abalone Eight Treasure Duck (£138) and Peking Duck Three Way (£108). There are plenty of options featuring truffle and Oscietra caviar if that’s your bag, Chinese ingredients I have never heard of and to my surprise, southern European ingredients such as Spanish Carabinero prawns, Iberico pork and mozzarella!
The dining room is influenced by 1920s Shanghai Art Deco. There are blue-black walls, Chinese marble floor tiles with a patterned design, chandeliers and downlighters giving off a soft glow. There is stylish crockery and gentle piano jazz playing. The room has an atmosphere of restrained elegance. There’s also a ground-floor bar, a selection of lower ground-floor private dining rooms and more restaurant seating on the first floor.
We ordered a selection of dishes from the à la carte menu and a bottle of classic Burgundian Chablis, Domaine du Colombier, that was creamy with a well-balanced acidity. We started with Dim Sum. Three brightly coloured silky Shanghai dumplings arrived at the table; delicious melt-in-the-mouth parcels of Iberico pork, juicy crab and chicken.
We tried two of the soup options at Three Gorges. A well-constructed double-boiled herbal duck soup with a properly roasted duck cube, peach gum, yam bean and the tartness of Goji berries. A seafood and corn soup was nicely viscous and clean tasting.
I’d never before sampled a Babylonia sea snail. It was a bit chewy but had plenty of flavour with a savoury miso sauce and the spicy fragrance of Tagarashi red chilli.
A hand-rolled corn-fed chicken roll was stuffed with soft crystal noodles, shredded red pepper and peanuts. The chicken was tender with a hint of spice with the pepper and peanuts offering textural contrast.
Crispy Chinese baby cabbage came poached in a meaty rich ham-based Supreme stock with sweet roasted garlic.
I loved the dish of XO sweet beans with the crisp beans lightly stir-fried with spring onion and doused in the long-lasting gentle heat of the Chef’s XO sauce.
Deep-fried nuggets of soft-shell crab were entirely lacking in grease and were studded with crunchy almonds and peanuts with a spiky 7-spice salt to liven things up even more. Wonderful!
A dish of charcoal-grilled Padron peppers stuffed with perfectly cooked Iberico pork and prawns was surprisingly gentle.
A fat juicy scallop sat on an umami-laden bed of taro paste with the house’s signature XO sauce vibing it up.
Sichuan dry-fried string beans had a satisfying snap and the accompanying Chinese mushrooms and preserved pickle dry-fried were hot and crisp. This was another great vegetable dish.
Fragrant slow-cooked Iberico pork belly, known as Dongpo pork, was super tender and served with cinnamon and Chinese basil sauce.
I didn’t enjoy the sweet and sour mock chicken with peppers and pineapple slathered with the chef’s plum sauce. It was too acidic and if it was an ironic nod to the classic dish, it didn’t work for me.
There was a lightness, refinement and sense of balance about Chef Qian’s dishes which begs the question as to whether we are seeing the emergence of a Cantonese ‘nouvelle cuisine’. With friendly informed service, you’ll have a lovely time at the Three Gorges and maybe like me, you’ll want to return to explore this cuisine further.
The Three Gorges
36 Goodge Street
London
W1T 2QN
Telephone: +44 20 3337 0900
