Chinese Laundry celebrates one-year anniversary with new brunch menu

Critically-acclaimed Chinese Laundry, on Islington’s Upper Street, will launch a new Chinese brunch menu served in a new first floor mezzanine restaurant space, on 11 October.

Exactly one year after opening the popular Islington restaurant and bar, and as part of a recent refurbishment, Chinese Laundry founders and chefs Tongtong Ren and Peiran Gong (both originally from China) have also transformed the intimate ground floor space to accommodate an extended bar area at the front of the site.

Upstairs, the new airy and bright mezzanine floor will seat a further 28 guests and serve the new Chinese brunch menu from Tuesday through to Sunday, 12pm to 3pm (from 10am on a weekend).

Lunch time visitors to Chinese Laundry will have the opportunity to order from the extended all-day menu inspired by Tongtong and Peiran’s upbringing in 1980s China.

Dishes served will offer guests a modern take on traditional Chinese breakfast dishes, using the finest quality, free range ingredients, sourced from the UK, including dishes such as ‘XO Potato’, ‘Crab Congee’, ‘Dumpling Green Bowl’, ‘Chinese Date and Goji Berry Granola’, and a selection of Baozi on the weekends.

These will be served alongside Chinese Laundry’s already popular brunch dishes including ‘Dumpling Stir Fry’, ‘Cong you Bing’ (crispy scallion pancake), and the ‘Laundry Full’ a Chinese take on the full English breakfast.

The traditional Chinese dishes are inspired by the chefs and owners Peiran and Tongtong’s upbringing during 80’s China. The era was a time of economic reform after the failure of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, when people were finally able to grow and sell their own produce. A greater selection of ingredients could therefore be sourced and street food stalls and markets popped up all over China.

For Peiran, Tongtong and the Chinese people as a whole, food was the most important part of their lives during this renaissance period, as they learnt how to cook without wasting any part of the animal and how to make even the simplest vegetable flavoursome.

This is evident throughout the menu at Chinese Laundry, with spicy chicken carcass – a traditional Chinese drinking snack, one of the dinner menu highlights, alongside deep fried century egg – technically an aged duck egg, which allowed the Chinese to preserve nutritious duck eggs long after they were originally laid.

Continuing in the same vein, Peiran and Tongtong have created a new cocktail menu to capture the essence of these Chinese flavours, to be served at the new bar at the entrance of the restaurant.

Over the years, the pair have infused traditional Chinese rice spirit, Baijiu, with a number of ingredients including hawthorn, greengage and bamboo. The new cocktail menu will combine these infusions along with fermented and pickled ingredients found in a traditional Chinese kitchen.

The menu combined with the carefully curated retro interiors take diners back to the 80’s China of Peiran and Tongtong’s childhoods. The two separate floors at Chinese Laundry showcase the different sides of their upbringing; downstairs for a cosy intimate setting for dinner and cocktails reminiscent of their grandma’s houses.

The large front windows, which double up as doors, offer counter dining with a view of bustling Upper Street. And upstairs, the new mezzanine boasts large windows and plenty of natural light during the day to showcase a brighter, sunnier side of Chinese culture.

The new Chinese brunch menu at Chinese Laundry will be served on the new mezzanine level at the restaurant from 11 October. The new bar area is now open.