Jen Café (Chinese & English favourites)
Although this green-painted café calls itself a tea specialist, it’s the hand-wrapped dumplings that keep us coming back. The cheapest are the northern Chinese jiao zi (aka ‘Beijing dumplings’) – eight white sachets filled to bursting with pork or vegetables for a fiver. OK, we’ll come clean – they’re one of our go-to Chinatown snacks.
If dumplings drive you to deliriums of delight, make friends with Jen – a Chinatown café where the pillowy parcels reign supreme.
This green-painted café occupies a prominent Chinatown corner site where you can often watch the cooks sitting in front of the windows wrapping the hand-made dumplings. The cheapest dish is the northern Chinese snack of jiao zi, on this menu called ‘Beijing dumplings’, costing a mere fiver: eight white sachets like overfilled ravioli, in either a pork or vegetarian version. The same dumplings fried are guo tie, ‘fried dumplings’, at £6; also called ‘pot stickers’ in American English, these are closely related to Japanese gyoza. The wonton soup is yet another variation on this, and is worth the £6 for the intensely savoury stock.
There are plenty of other dishes served at this simple, no-frills café, from buttered toast through barbecued pork to Hong Kong-style tea and Taiwanese-style bubble teas, but it’s the freshly-made dumplings that keep us coming back.
Address: 4-8 Newport Place, London WC2H 7JP
Phone: +44 7587 500959
Tube: Leicester Square
Opening Hours
Monday to Wednesday - 11:30am to 9pm
Thursday to Sunday - 11:30am to 9:30pm
