The new Chinese Revolution

In the far-off Seventies, most restaurateurs would have been hard-pressed to name half a dozen restaurant designers - we had only just got away from red, squeezy, tomato-shaped ketchup dispensers and Formica tables. In the Eighties, getting your restaurant 'designed' was a pretty cool thing to do.

But it wasn't until the Nineties that press releases started to boast about just who had specified the blond wood flooring, the bar hewn from a single chunk of rose granite or the striking primary colours. As ever, the past three decades saw the Chinese restaurant industry going its own sweet way, and the vast majority of Chinatown eateries were functional, not fancy. What's more, that's just the way we liked them.

These places seemed so much more real when they were shabby - white paper tablecloths, wipe-down menus, tables of Chinese people who looked up and stared when you walked in. A strange cuisine deserves its own theatre and we've grown accustomed to the basic minimalist approach.

So the opening of Hakkasan earlier in the year came as a bit of a shock. This Chinese restaurant cost £3 million to kit out - designer uniforms, green slate, moody lighting. Little did we realise that this restaurant was merely illustrating a trend, as 2001 is the year when several Chinese restaurants have been looking to their image. Suddenly the 'New' which was slapped in front of restaurant names with such cheerful abandon started to mean new. The New Diamond had a refit. The New Fook Lam Moon was spruced up. Jen shut for a refurb. But strangest of all was the rebirth of Wong Kei...

Rude awakening at Wong Kei
Getting the gen on the authentic
New Diamond is a gem
Lee Ho Fook: a Soho institution