Sino the times: the decline of Chinese restaurants

Britain is falling out of love with Chinese restaurants, according to data that found our consumption of their fare has more than halved since 2007.

As the sector faces multiple challenges, the Canton-style food that Chinese restaurants have traditionally served in the UK is "truly dying", Gordon Chong of the British Chinese Society told The Telegraph.

Pandemic slump

The first Chinese restaurant in the UK opened in Glasshouse Street, off Piccadilly Circus, in 1908 and Chinese meals have "always been popular in the UK", or at least they were "until recently", said the broadsheet.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

In 2008, an average of 15g of Chinese food a week was eaten outside the home by the average person, according to government data. Between 2011 and 2014, that had dropped to 12g, and it had fallen again to 10g by 2018. By 2022 and 2023 it had stalled at 7g, failing to bounce back from the pandemic slump.

Constant bad press

Experts think this downward trend will continue because second-generation Chinese immigrants don't want to run restaurants and takeaways like their parents did. With soaring rents, rising costs and changing consumer tastes, that has become "back breaking", so second-generation immigrants are "getting into professional work" instead.

A lot of those who "grew up in the UK" have "moved on", Kim, the daughter of takeaway owners in Scotland, told The Sun, and they prefer to "study or have their own career", which means Chinese takeaways will "decrease over the next 20 years".

Writing for Vice, Angela Hui, whose parents owned a Chinese takeaway in Wales, said Chinese restaurants and takeaways have faced a number of specific problems, including "dealing with harmful, stereotypical fear-mongering headlines" and "constant bad press" linking Chinese food to "serious health warnings".

The "meteoric rise" of food-ordering apps means that smaller, independent businesses "stuck in the past" are "getting left behind" and older Chinese generations who opened restaurants and takeaways in the 1980s and 1990s either "don't understand the digital age" or they "straight up don't want any part of it".

Chinese people are "naturally cautious and superstitious", said Jun Kit Man, whose family ran a Chinese restaurant in London, so "if you ask them to change something or invest money to be listed online" they just "don't see the point of it".

Regional specialities

Although Canton-style food is on the decline, other cuisines from Shenzhen, the northern regions of China, and Thai and Korean food are growing.

Hungry Brits are "being more adventurous" and "enjoying great dishes like bubble tea, xiao long bao [and] dim sum", Joe Groves, Head of Consumer Communications at Deliveroo, told Vice, and the popularity of regional Chinese food like "Sichuan, Xi'an and Hunan cuisine" is rising.