TOM PARKER BOWLES: 'It's location isn't sexy but the food is on fire.'

See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy TOM PARKER BOWLES, FOOD CRITIC AND AUTHOR Updated: 04:00 BST, 27 June 2026

‘If the restaurant you have been directed to lies between the 7-Eleven and the dry cleaners in a dusty strip mall, then you’re probably at the right place.’ Jonathan Gold, the legendary Los Angeles Times restaurant critic, may have died nearly eight years back, but his wisdom is eternal.Northwest London’s Dong Yuan is a case in point. Situated on the edge of a building site, in a bleakly anonymous Park Royal industrial estate, this is not the sort of place you’d stumble across. They haven’t even changed the sign from the site’s last incarnation, ‘Meat & Grill’. But if it’s chilli-charged, smoke-scented Hunan-style Chinese cooking you’re after, you won’t find finer than this. Stir-fried crystal prawns are ‘plump, juicy and garlic-laden’I’d been meaning to go for months, ever since reading about the place in the ever-enlightening Vittles newsletter. So finally, on a sweatily sultry late-May night, we pass grimly anonymous dark kitchens, food storage units and great clusters of brand-new skyscrapers that seem to pop up unbidden, before arriving in a tiny room barely bigger than the average restaurant loo. There are four tables of four, plus a fridge with endless variations of cloyingly sweet iced tea. If you want booze, bring your own.The kitchen, about the size of a double bed, is no more than two metres from where we sit. In there, chef and owner Cui Yaohua mans wok burners so fierce that they require a constant stream of cooling water. He cooks alone, battling great licks of flame, a warrior standing firm against the ever-swelling armies of orders. You can hear the roar of gas, the sizzle as meat meets steel. This man is a master.Hunan cooking is often spicier than Sichuan, which is saying something. And Yaohua’s spicy beef xian chao (or stir fry) seethes with three kinds of chilli – mild green Turkish, sharp fermented, and incendiary bird’s eye – alongside spring onion, and luscious chewy beef, all scented with that all important wok hei, or ‘wok breath’. There’s heat here, lots of it, but magic, too. Kidney ‘flowers’ are equally sublime (and fierce), the organs sliced thin and scored with a knife, meaning they’re winsomely tender. Wood ear mushrooms add cartilaginous crunch. And it’s not all about chilli punch. Scrambled eggs with tomato is a study in easy comfort, while crystal prawns, plump, juicy and garlic-laden, are as pure as they are delicate. This is some of the best regional Chinese cooking in London. Just don’t go expecting a view.About £25 per head. Dong Yuan, 10 School Rd, London NW10; 020 8259 3001