A restaurant in London’s Chinatown once called the capital’s rudest has been fined more than £40,000 after mice and cockroaches were found in its kitchen.
Wong Kei, which has traded on Wardour Street for decades and was “once famous for its impersonal level of service”, as the online guide to Chinatown puts it, was prosecuted for food hygiene offences and after its owners were found to have falsified documents.
The restaurant held legendary status among those enjoying London’s nightlife in the 1980s and 1990s, and stories were rife about “being served by staff who would abruptly chivvy diners along, and who would bicker among themselves, and sometimes even physically fight”, according to the Guardian’s food reviewer Grace Dent.
Dent, who said that Wong Kei was one of the first restaurants she returned to after the pandemic lockdowns ended, wrote in 2020: “It has existed for so very long, and fed so many, that it is less of a restaurant and more part of the capital’s folklore.”
The business was refurbished and brought under new ownership in 2014 with much emphasis on a change of tone – if not menu.
On a visit in 2022, the local council’s environmental health team found mice and cockroaches, raw and pre-cooked food being mixed, and other poor hygiene practices. The council served Wong Kei with hygiene improvement notices.
In response, the company told Westminster city council that it would make multiple changes and that a director, Daniel Luc, had left. However, on a reinspection in May 2023, the council found no changes had been made and that Luc had “overall control” of the new owner, Gosing Ltd.
Gosing was ordered to pay £31,503 in fines and costs after pleading guilty at Westminster magistrates court to failing to comply with food safety and hygiene regulations earlier this month. Luc also pleaded guilty and was fined £10,803.
The two parties combined pleaded guilty to 11 food hygiene offences.
In July this year, on the most recent inspection, Wong Kei received a food hygiene rating of two out of a possible five, meaning “some improvement is necessary” and a reinspection this month found that it had “addressed most of the matters of non-compliance”.
As the business is now classed as C risk – as not entirely compliant with health and safety regulations – inspectors will revisit every 18 months.
Councillor Aicha Less, the deputy leader of the council, said the fines “demonstrate that Westminster council remains committed to ensuring the safety and protection of consumers who enjoy the wide variety of food within the borough”.
Less added: “It is only fair that we ensure that those businesses who invest in compliance have the chance to thrive and that those who put others at risk of harm are held to account for their failures and unscrupulous practices.”
Wong Kei has been contacted for comment.
