Opium isn't your typical Chinatown restaurant: You enter through a numberless green door – only when the amber light is on, mind – and find yourself a three-storey labyrinth complete with a dim sum dining room, an apothecary-style bar, a tea room and a 'bartender's table'. All this is already enough to warrant a visit, but if you needed an extra reason, the Chinese New Year celebrations should do it. Events will be going all week, including a Chivas Regal 18 year old art of blending masterclass. You'll get two cocktails, excellent dim sum and a bottle of your blended whisky.
Hakkasan's celebrations will go off with a bang, from the Chinese lion dance taking place on 11th and 12th February to its wishing tree, where guests will be invited to share their hopes for the new year. The food, too, is getting a celebratory treatment: each dish is designed to represent joy, luck and prosperity for 2016, starting with double-boiled ginseng and chicken soup and finishing with a banana and peanut cake.
We're not sure quite how Chinese gin is, but when Yauatcha plans to ring in the Year of the Monkey in collaboration with Monkey 47 Schwarzwald Dry Gin, we don't really care. It's creating an exclusive gin cocktail flight, complemented by a series of macarons inspired by the gin's 47 botanicals, as well as a festive menu with caviar dim sum and a hakka fortune pot.
There can't be many better ways to celebrate, well, anything, than at the restaurant on The Shard's 33rd floor. To celebrate the new year, Hutong is putting on a special 'Double Happiness' menu, priced at £88 (eight being considered the luckiest number), which will feature a traditional lo hei mixed raw seafood salad. Custom dictates you call out “Lo Hei” while tossing the ingredients high in the air – sounds complicated, but delicious nonetheless.
The hot spot specialist salutes another Chinese tradition with its 'longevity fish ball' game. It invites diners to try to make the longest, unbroken noodle (symbolizing long life) using fish ball paste packed into a small piping bag and then cooking it in their broth. The prize? 50% off your bill.
There's more monkeying around at Soho favourite Cha Cha Moon's, where there'll be a menu featuring traditional plates such as Singapore char kway teow alongside special limited-editions options such as a banana daiquiri, a baked banana dessert and other treats.
