Hainan House. Discover This Exceptional Neighbourhood Chinese In Islington.

Andy Mossack reviews Hainan House, fast becoming an Upper Street icon.

It may not have the look and feel of Upper Street’s trend-setting cognoscenti but take it from me Hainan House can hold its own with the very best of them.

This pocket-sized independent female-owned Chinese restaurant is all about South Chinese home-style cooking courtesy of founder Sunny Wu’s upbringing. Not only the flavours of Hainan Island Province, often nicknamed the ‘Hawaii of China’, but also Shanghai, and her family ties stretching to Hubei and Jiangxi.

As Sunny is quick to point out “Hainan House comes from many different places. The food is shaped by how I understand home, through memory, balance, and everyday meals. We focus on warmth and clarity, bringing familiar dishes to life with sincerity and care”.

A fact that’s plainly obvious through the open kitchen, where despite the lack of space, a veritable bounty of food emanates.

However, Hainan House’s opening in September 2023 was no lucky punt, it was the climax to Sunny’s first dining forays with numerous successful pop-ups across London, including a stint at the well-respected guest chef residency resto Carousel.

Hainan House offers a warm and inviting vibe as soon as you walk in the door. A soft pastel interior, timber flooring, homely wall art and some counter seating around the bar. It feels more like an intimate Hainan Island home kitchen rather than a restaurant, which I guess is the exact experience Sunny is looking to create.

The home feel continues into the main restaurant which is a compact L shape dominated by the open kitchen downstairs with further seating upstairs. I love open kitchens in restaurants, it’s an opportunity for pure culinary theatre, and with Hainan House’s emphasis on poaching, steaming, clay pot braising and wok frying – more than enough action to keep you entertained.

After a warm greeting, restaurant manager Faisal was keen to point out the culinary directions we were about to discover: “Hainan Island has enjoyed north Vietnamese and Singaporean influences as well as southern China, and we’re particularly proud of our clay pot dishes”. There was no getting away with it, I was very intrigued to say the least.

So with Faisal’s guidance, and an advance notice that “all dishes are served as they are ready” we kicked off with a plate of home pickled pineapple cubes as a palate cleanser which got the juices going followed by a sharing plate of mushroom rice wraps with fermented chilli (£9.50). Three delightful crunchy gem lettuces provided the wrapping; all loaded with savoury fried rice infused with a house-fermented mushroom sauce and topped with fermented chillies. Clearly, house fermenting was something of a thing here at Hainan House.

Fortunately, our table was right on the corner of the L giving us a perfect view of the kitchen which by now was going full throttle with two chefs simultaneously working the multi burner stove.

We had ordered three clay pot dishes; braised beef stew (£18.70), a traditional quarter house-poached corn-fed chicken (also comes as half or whole £15/28/40), and a vegetable claypot with glass noodles (£13.50).

The beef stew was a triumph. Slo-cooked and melt-in-the-mouth soft, bathed in a really tasty gravy. The poached chicken was a traditional Hainanese dish delicately poached in broth and Shao xing rice wine, sliced and deliberately served at room temperature. Interestingly, there was a remark in the menu about any pinkish colour being perfectly normal and not relating to undercooking. That said it was delightfully soft and the soy garlic dipping sauce which came with it was a perfect accompaniment.

Our vegetable claypot with noodles took me instantly back to a steamy night in Hanoi and frankly you can’t get more authentic than that.

As we were busy devouring our mains, a sensational looking whole sea bream platter (£29 with 20-minute cooking time) was ceremonially delivered to our neighbouring table. I heard combined gasps from not only our neighbours but various other tables in the vicinity. Clearly a winner with the regulars.

Faisal was back to check on dessert and after enquiring about the sweetness of our teeth, suggested the house made traditional Yi Bua sticky rice cakes (£3.50 each with a 10-minute cooking time). These were hand-made sticky rice cakes with brown sugar, toasted coconut, sesame, and a peanut butter filling wrapped in a banana leaf. They were glutinous warm balls of lusciousness.

As an extra bit of self-indulgence we also tucked into the house Taro dessert bowl (£8) which Faisal assured us was an unmissable traditional Taiwanese dish made from taro (which is a vegetable similar to yam), rice and pandan “shrimp”, palm sugar syrup, and dried osmanthus which looked like green jellybeans. It was a suitable climax to a very entertaining culinary journey of discovery.

Hainan House fully deserves its place on the hallowed turf of Upper Street as one of Islington’s hidden neighbourhood gems. Homely, pocket-sized and unassuming it may well be, but there is genuine culinary class in Sunny’s family recipes, and you’ll be hard pressed to find similar quality southeast Asian fare for the price.

Highly recommended.

Images (C) Hainan House and Andy Mossack