The Hunan Man
Jay Rayner ate the diced chicken with chilli peppers here and wrote that it was the best Chongqing chicken he had ever had the good fortune to try (The Observer).
Why go
For a regional Chinese tradition London barely cooks, served without softening. JianRen Zhou is described by both the critic and the guide as a veteran Hunanese chef, and the menu he writes draws on Hunan first, then Sichuan, and briefly Guangdong. Rayner quoted Fuchsia Dunlop on what makes Hunanese cooking its own thing, which is a preference for "bold savoury tastes, chilli-hot tastes and sour-hot tastes", and then admitted that once he was eating he stopped caring about the taxonomy and got swept up in the drama.
The dishes he named are the ones to write down. Lamb ribs slow-cooked and then fried so the fat crisps and the meat pulls off with chopsticks. Stir-fried beef with pickled white peppers, "like a soft, pliable biltong, the flavour earthy and deep as if it is a concentrated version of itself". Crab Hunan style, which he described as being like crab with ginger and spring onion "only with repeated jabs of bold and friendly heat", and which used every napkin on the table.
The menu is long and it does not flinch. Pig intestines are offered three ways. The beer-braised duck comes with its head and bill. Rayner's warning is the practical one: "There's little here for your scared friends."
Order this / avoid
- Order: the diced chicken with chilli peppers, and the rice with finely chopped salted red chillies to go beside it. Then the cumin lamb ribs, the crab Hunan style, and the stir-fried beef with pickled white peppers. Drunken peanuts to start.
- Avoid: coming as a pair. Rayner's closing line was that his only mistake was to visit with one other person, and that the place needs a gang. Also avoid the fried glutinous rice dumplings, which he found thudding, and the sweet rice-ball soup, which he left barely started.
What locals & experts say
- Jay Rayner, The Observer, January 2024:
It is the best version of Chongqing chicken I have ever had the good fortune to try, the marinated thigh chopped into small pieces and deep-fried until shatteringly crisp, then pelted with ground Sichuan peppercorns.
On the room: it isas boisterous as the huge, garish paintings of Chinese landscapes on the walls of the compact dining room
. On what to do about it:The menu has uncompromising depths that need to be explored... It needs a gang. Find some friends.
1 - Harden's survey diners, in the guide's own summary:
Excellent and authentic
,traditional Chinese food that's a million miles from what you'd get in Chinatown
. And the counterweight, which the guide prints in the same breath:Good, but not as good as some of the reviews had led me to expect!
Unbylined survey copy, so nobody's personal verdict.2 - No chef vote, and none borrowed. Every recorded London chef pick was checked on 1 August 2026. The two that come up for "Hunan" belong to Hunan in Pimlico, a different restaurant, and so does the "Vittles rec from chef" note on Jeff's own list. Neither one is claimed for this room.
Good to know
- Where: 45 Grafton Way W1T 5DQ, Fitzrovia, a short walk from Goodge Street or Warren Street.
- Hours: midday to 22:00 Monday to Saturday and to 21:00 on Sunday, per Harden's guide record. Service is 12.5 percent.
- Numbers: bring four or more. The menu is built for a table.
- Money: at the time of the review, starters ran £3.80 to £13.80, large dishes £11.80 to £36.80, wines from £27 and a Tiger beer £4.60. Those are January 2024 prices.
- Check before you go. The website Rayner linked, thehunanman.co.uk, no longer resolves. Against that, the food-business registration still stands in this restaurant's name at this address with no successor registered, and the guide carries current hours. It is worth a phone call.
- Not to be confused with Hunan, the Pimlico restaurant that has been trading since the 1980s. Different owners, different postcode, different price band, and the chef recommendations that circulate under that name belong to it.
- Hygiene: FSA rating 5, inspected 22 February 2024. That is two and a half years old, which is the last recorded inspection rather than a lapse.4
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: Saved with no note; the note on my list belongs to Hunan in Pimlico.
Verdict
should-visit — Worth the detour, and take four people. Jay Rayner reviewed this for The Observer in January 2024 and wrote that the diced chicken with chilli peppers was the best version of Chongqing chicken he had ever had the good fortune to try, marinated thigh chopped small, fried until it shatters, then pelted with ground Sichuan peppercorns and served in heaps of dry red chilli you pick through rather than eat. The kitchen is run by JianRen Zhou, a veteran Hunanese chef, and the menu goes properly deep: pig intestines three ways, a beer-braised duck that arrives with its head, lamb ribs slow-cooked and then fried to a crust, beef with pickled white peppers that eats like soft biltong. London's Chinese field is one of the deepest in Europe, which raises the bar, but its Hunanese end is thin, and that is what makes a specialist like this worth crossing town for. It holds at worth-the-detour rather than higher for three reasons stated plainly. Rayner did not like everything, and said so about the glutinous rice dumplings and a dessert he could not finish. Harden's survey diners include a riposte that it is good but not as good as the reviews suggested. And all of the evidence is two and a half years old while the restaurant's own website has stopped resolving, so check it is open before you build a night on it.