[Music] today i'm going to be exploring london's chinatown and i thought i'd take you along with me but before we hop into it there are a couple things i want to explain before you decide to come to chinatown chinatown is right in the center of london so it's really easy to get to you've got leicester square station just a two minute walk away and covent garden and a few other stations a very short walk away as well in terms of when to visit chinatown is quiet in the mornings but that picks up around lunchtime and it's really buzzy in the evenings even into the early hours of the morning we're going to start by heading over to china exchange we're going to be meeting a couple people over there so let's go i love coming to chinatown at this time of the morning because it's just all the deliveries that are coming in and it's really quiet it's quite relaxing good for if you want to take photos because there's not many people around so we're here at china exchange with marco and peng who are volunteer tour guides and they do these great tours around chinatown hello my name is hang i'm the volunteer history champion for china exchange since 2018. my name is marco i've also been a volunteer here as a history champion for three years almost now and they're going to take us around chinatown and show us some little bits and pieces that people pass by all the time and we actually don't know very much about them chinatown it's only nine streets but these streets are full of history and fascinating characters that live through them in 1985 this area is officially become a london chinatown and the westminster council they spend a million times on changing and making it chinatown and also they have this pair of stone lion put on it it's a donation by the people republic of china is to protect the area to concern what is good what is bad you can find out so much about it just by looking up as you walk down the road there's so many plaques that tell you about the important personalities their histories with the support of the local council in the 1980s chinatown was actually officially established and the lampposts were painted red the lanterns were pulled up and everything changed but nothing really changed so handymarco gave us a little bit of a teaser of the tours that they run for china exchange well the tour lasts for an hour and a half and we always choose different aspects or even different stories to tell our guests i walked through this area all the time and i had no idea the story behind them some of them i had never even noticed before so it's been really interesting thank you bye okay it's basically lunch time now so i've met up with rhys who is actually one of our 11 london followers and he's recommended that we have lunch at lotus garden so we're gonna go in and eat and have a little chat let's go i'm starving okay so tell me about your personal affiliation with chinatown i mean i grew up mainly in europe and i also live in japan so we would always come here during the holidays to see family to see my grandmother and especially in chinatown we kind of you know come together as a big family and kind of have big meals together so you know i think in chinese culture we definitely socialize over food so you know my grandma always finds a special place for her especially it's a big place for her social life some dim sum she'll go play marjon with her friends which is you know amazing for someone who's 91. i'm very jealous why'd you recommend this restaurant you've come here a lot and you know the service is you know very authentic uh the food is very good as well i'm excited to eat okay so what do you think we should order so the crystal porn dumplings as a classic is always really good the shanghai style pork dumplings that's the one with the pork ball and the kind of gel soup which is kind of melted as it steams we always go for deep fried shredded squids then i'll add a couple of veggie things in there a tip as well if you need to refill your tea you leave the lid like this and then the weight your nose to refill the teeth okay we're going to go to mamason's now which is like basically my favorite dessert in london would you like to join yeah of course all right let's go let's go okay so mia works here at mamason so she's going to tell us a little bit about the bill log and the halo halo which is another popular thing here yes so mama since in general is the very first like filipino dessert parlor in europe and our beloved is a bit like ice cream sandwich you can choose any ice cream flavor with it but ube is the way to go it's like the number one favorite it's a purple yam indigenous of the philippines it's naturally purple so that's what gives it its fun flavor and color as well and the hala halo here it's our traditional filipino dessert halahala actually translates to mix mix so you can mix all the layers as well so you get a layer of coconut strings a layer of coconut jelly jackfruit red bean shaved ice with evaporated milk corn flakes we top off with lechofan which is a creamed caramel dessert and a scoop of ube ice cream a wafer sticker and also you just top off of crushed oreos and some people do also tend to enjoy each layer by itself so that's another way you can eat it as well yum i love it very good okay so reece is gone um and i'm gonna pop into kova patisserie because it's literally right here and they have like some of these amazing cakes so this is their matcha crepe it's made with matcha powder and 18 layers of crepes because crepes come from the french side of the patisserie and the matcha is traditionally japanese so it combines the two this is a new one and the woman that works in the shop was telling me it took them a really long time to formulate this but it's a matcha tiramisu the final one is the sea salt cheese lava which they said in the shop that this is one of their most popular cakes okay we're at via food and this is a vietnamese restaurant that does really nice food their head chef is jeff tan he's one of the top asian chefs here in the uk he was the head chef at hakusan mayfair when they got their michelin star we're gonna go into via food and we are gonna have dinner here the food is fantastic but we're also gonna go up to their somewhat hidden bar that is on the top floor it's called viet lounge and that is run by their head barman alex loy alex floyd is also a very big deal here in london he has head farming at the dorchester park chinois and at hakkasan so let's go have a few drinks and some food [Music] hello my name is alex i am the bartender in the great food and grapefruit is one of the restaurants in the china town and we are the secret bar on china park come to find us when you're free we make the cocktail it's already different than the normal cocktail we're using the asian style ingredient to break the cocktail in the red food so you can try a different kind of the tasting and then we use some ingredients and you never know some spice some flour even some like the basil leaves to make the cocktail so when we like the different than the transitional cocktail you have it before this cocktail will be called ho chi minh and it's the second biggest city in the gretna i mix this together [Music] looks beautiful this string will be called dragon keys [Music] that looks nice it's quite unique this drink will be called kiss me salt oh wow [Music] i'm ready to eat [Music] thanks for joining me around chinatown but of course all the places that i went to are not the only good places around here so leave your own suggestions of where to go down in the comments and to see more of my area guides for around london then click one of the boxes that's popping up next to me to watch another video today i'm gonna be bustling chinatown oh spicy