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Chop Suey on the Strand – Whatever Happened to one of London’s top Chinese Restaurants in the 1930s?

Posted: November 14th, 2016 | No Comments »

I recently wrote a round up of the London Chinese restaurant scene in the 1930s and wartime for The Cleaver Quarterly. I concentrated on the establishments in Soho, though with nods to those nearby on Shaftesbury Avenue, Piccadilly, Charing Cross Road and Denmark Street (not forgetting the few “refreshment rooms” left down in the old, and by then almost over, Chinatown of Limehouse). Space meant omitting a few places for various reasons – one of which was Chop Suey, down on the Strand at the corner with Buckingham Street (that runs down towards the Thames). Technically it was at no.28 Buckingham Street and was listed in the directories as the “Strand Chinese Restaurant”, though advertised itself as the Chop Suey.

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Chop Suey cropped up the other day when I was reading the rather amazing 1937 crime book The Face on the Cutting Room Floor by Cameron McCabe (in reality Ernest Borneman). In the book the characters debate where to have dinner and consider the Chop Suey in Buckingham Street. However, one character hates Chinese food and so they head to “the Turkish place in Greek Street” (though could have gone to one of a couple of Chinese restaurants on that street too!). Given that the term Chop Suey is really usually associated in the UK with America many readers may consider that McCabe/Borneman simply invented the name – but he didn’t and obviously knew his London Chinese restaurants. The Chop Suey (sometimes known as the New Chop Suey) had opened around 1930…Here’s a review from a 1932 edition of the Australian Queenslander newspaper (21/7/32 to be precise)…

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‘…the Chop Suey, at the corner of Buckingham Street, which is presided over by Mr. Y. Fugii. This Chop Suey is different from all the others, and is probably the only one of its kind in the world. It is unique, in that it is half Chinese and half Japanese. The ground floor is the Japanese department, and here is set a small gas ring upon every table, so that he who runs, or rather sits, may, if he wishes, be his own cook. I should perhaps at once explain that either the proprietor or one of the waitresses will not only show you how to do it, but will actually cook a meal under your very nose and upon the table at which you sit if you are entirely ignorant as to the proper procedure. The fact that all the food is brought to the table in the raw state precludes any possibility of its being other than fresh and good, while a visit to Mr. Fugii’s restaurant affords the novice a very good and free lesson in Chinese and Japanese cooking. Chop-sticks are provided, either of wood (enclosed with a small tooth pick and hygienically wrapped in paper), or of ivory, and the correct way of eating is to put some rice in your bowl and help yourself with the chop sticks from the pan, carrying the food from pan to bowl and there dipping it in the rice and sauce, or whatever you have. It is not correct to fill your bowl from the main dish, and the bowl, as hereafter explained, should be taken near the mouth and the food thrown in by means of the chop sticks. Chop Suey.’

Whether the place was any good or not is questionable – a supposed Chinese visitor writing in 1932 after dining at the Chop Suey commented, “The Chop Suey in Buckingham Street, off the Strand, owned by a Japanese, provides the Japanese dish called Skerki, as colourless a thing as the human palate has ever invented.” However, that diner wasn’t actually Chinese but, in reality, the author of the popular Kai Lung books Ernest Bramah (and used the pseudonym Peh Der Chen), who wrote a 1932 book entitled Honourable and Peculiar Ways that gave a quick round up of London’s Chinese eateries. If anyone has any idea what “skerki” was do let me know?

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No.28 Buckingham Street was, I believe, totally destroyed by a German high explosive bomb during the Blitz sometime between October 1940 and June 1941. That area, close to the prime target of Charing Cross railway station, was then left vacant and not redeveloped until later. It is now a modern pub and large block (containing a branch of NatWest Bank at ground level) fronting on to The Strand – here is site of No.28 and the Chop Suey looking up Buckingham Street towards the Strand at the junction with York Place….it is not overly attractive I’m afraid…After that the bomb damage maps for the Strand that show the havoc the Nazi Luftwaffe dropped on London – while the junction of Buckingham Street and Strand shows no damage close by on either side are purple squares indicating “damaged beyond repair”. And finally the Post Office Directory for 1943 (as above) yet now with No.28 gone completely never to return!

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