Cult-Followed Modern Chinese Restaurant Extends South East London Residency

Chinese Laundry has extended its residency at the former Mo Pho site in Brockley, now owned by local — and essential — London coffee shop Browns of Brockley — until February 2020. It was originally slated for three months.

The stint in Brockley takes impetus from travel around China in the wake of the duo’s residency at the Mountgrove Bothy in Islington last year. Dishes are not fixed, but so far include drunken crayfish, kungpao chicken with girolles, and beef and tomato dumplings. Restaurant co-founders Peiran Gong and Tongtong Ren say:

We are turning it into a small, personal dinning room where we’ll offer a table of dishes we put together without a fixed menu. This place will allow us to do more than what we can ever before, just because it’s small-which means more flexibility on what we can offer. We are very excited to explore and cook all the food we wanted to share with you.

An initial residency at Newcomer Wines took place 17 — 18 April 2019, with Chinese Laundry co-founders Peiran Gong and Tongtong Ren having wanted to put the importer’s wines on their menu before the restaurant had to close permanently on Upper Street in March 2018. A no reservations evening included cucumber, smoked eel, shiitake, and peanut; squid dumpling, ink sauce, and spring onion; and dan dan noodles with crab and pork fat.

Gong and Ren’s restaurant, which opened in 2015 and won acclaim for its food inspired, but not constrained by the Chinese cuisine of their childhood, was beset by problems in 2017 through 2018. A fire in February 2017 was followed by squatters occupying the restaurant in December of that year.

Chinese Laundry @ 10 Coulgate Street, SE4 2RW
9 May — 20 February 2020, £40pp including corkage.
Thursday — Saturday, 5:30p.m. — 10p.m.
Sunday, 5:30p.m. — 9p.m. Bookings up to 4 people at a time.