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Amy Poon Builds on Family Legacy with Modern Chinese Cooking at Poon’s at Somerset House

Amy Poon brings a personal touch to Chinese cuisine with a menu that blends family tradition and contemporary flavors at her first permanent restaurant.

For years, Amy Poon wasn’t sure she wanted to take over the family business. Although her father, Bill Poon, is a well-regarded Chinese-British chef and helmed a successful group of restaurants in London and Geneva, Poon didn’t initially follow suit. After years pursuing other paths, she opened her first restaurant, Poon’s at Somerset House, in November 2025.

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“I am the least strategic person,” Poon tells Observer. “My entire career has been haphazard and accidental. And I’m not sure I would have known how to do it any other way.”

Poon grew up in London, a witness to her parents’ success as chefs and restaurateurs. Bill and his wife, Cecilia, immigrated to the U.K. from Hong Kong in the late ‘60s, and eventually opened a group of restaurants that completely changed the London dining scene. The first Poon’s debuted in 1973. In 1980, Bill became the first Chinese chef to earn a Michelin star.

“Food is deeply embedded in our family,” Amy Poon recalls. “Growing up, our Sunday activity wasn’t going to a museum or swimming pool. It was traveling to eat. It was driving out to the country to try a new restaurant.”

Although Poon learned a lot from her parents, she didn’t immediately want to follow in their footsteps. Instead, Poon studied Japanese at Oxford and eventually moved to Tokyo to work in PR and advertising. Over the years, she’s lived between Japan, Australia and Singapore, never fully settling on a single career. In 2007, following a divorce, Poon moved back to London from Sydney, a year after her parents retired from the restaurant business and closed the last remaining Poon’s.

“The timeline is all a bit hazy,” she notes. “At the peak, there were seven restaurants. My parents retired, but they kept their dried meats business. When I came back to England, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next, and I revisited the idea of maybe bottling and selling their sauces, but the timing wasn’t right.”

Instead, Poon remarried and went back to Singapore, where she took a job in luxury recruitment. It wasn’t long before one of her friends sat her down for a serious talk. “She said, ‘What on Earth are you doing faffing around like this?’” Poon remembers. “She said, ‘Listen, the only time you’re happy is when you’re eating, thinking about eating, talking about cooking. It’s in your blood. It’s in your genes. I wish you would stop trying to distract yourself and get on with it.’”

Poon was so blown away by her friend’s faith in her that she quit her job. “I sat down and wrote a plan for a new iteration of Poon’s and how I would bring it back and what it would look like,” she says. “I was quite naive at the time. I met with everybody from private backers to big funds to private equity and everything else, and initially, I was quite excited that somebody would want to see me. I quickly realized that I was talking about a funky restaurant, as opposed to something fancy. So the first tranche of money I raised was from friends and family, and that was how it started.”

In 2018, Poon launched her first pop-up in Clerkenwell. She followed with a year-long residency at Carousel called Wontoneria, and in 2022, she launched a line of Poon’s sauces, which are now widely available in the U.K. Poon’s at Somerset House, near Covent Garden, is Poon’s first permanent site. It reflects both her family’s history and her personal preferences, particularly with the convivial vibe and the décor, which includes many of Poon’s own books.

“This is where you come if you don’t have a nice Chinese friend who will cook for you,” she explains. “I don’t think the way Chinese food is cooked at home is widely understood or appreciated. This should feel like you’re coming into my house. Hence, all of the books, because I love books. In so many Chinese restaurants, there’s an expectation that they should be themed in some way, that there will be a dragon somewhere.”

She adds, “If I could just feed everybody in my house, I would.”

Because the kitchen at Poon’s at Somerset House is small, the menu is somewhat constrained. Poon focuses on an assortment of cooking methods, as well as what she herself might want to eat. When she began working on the menu for the restaurant, she imagined how she would order dishes.

“When you order food in a Chinese restaurant, you want a range of cooking methods, a range of proteins, different taste profiles, a bit of everything,” she says. “Because in Chinese cooking, it’s all about balance. So when I put together the menu, that’s the focus.”

A few dishes reference the original Poon’s restaurants. The signature clay pot rice, topped with the family’s wind-dried meats, is nearly identical to the original. The Covent Garden roast duck salad originates from Bill’s version from the ‘70s. “It was very much a part of my childhood,” Poon says. “He was using leftover roast duck that he had in the restaurant because we were doing roast meats, but we aren’t doing roast meat here. But it’s quite close.”

Other dishes are refined versions of the Chinese home cooking that Poon enjoys. The steamed fish, typically seabass, is what she calls a “household classic.” “A lot of families will have their version of that,” she explains. “I’m quite keen to show that it’s not restaurant food. It really is very much home cooking. So if you’re expecting spring rolls or sour pork or lemon chicken or chicken with cashew nuts, you’re going to be disappointed.”

A standout menu item is Poon’s take on prawn toast, an exceptionally popular dish in British Chinese restaurants. Hers is cheekily dubbed “The hill that Amy didn’t die on” and features a heritage recipe suggested by her father.

“I really dislike prawn toast,” she says. “Prawn toast is ubiquitous, and it’s been hijacked by every gastropub between here and Scotland. I really didn’t want to do it. My mother said, ‘You know, darling, there are some things that will pay the rent. If people really want it, why won’t you accommodate that, even if it isn’t quite what you had in mind?’”

Poon floated a few possible iterations by her father, including a rösti version made with potatoes. He recalled an old recipe that used lardo instead of bread. The process is extremely involved, but results in an undeniably delicious dish. “It is labor-intensive and has many steps,” Poon says. “But I thought, ‘If I’m going to do it, I might as well do the best version that I can.’ Hence, the hill I didn’t die on because I didn’t shut it out altogether.”

However, she says, there’s a fine line between placating diners and ensuring the menu reflects what they might want or expect.

“If people don’t know about something, then they don’t know to want it,” she says. “I hate to use the word education, because it makes me sound all preachy and I don’t want to be, but I do think there’s probably some education to be done on dishes and ingredients. But we’ve found people are incredibly receptive to our stories and to finding out about new things.”

One thing the menu lacks is a large selection of desserts. Instead, it features only two options: lychee sorbet and a dish titled “Three bites of Helen Goh.” The latter is a reference to Poon’s friend, chef Helen Goh. The three bites include a piece of seasonal fruit, something chocolatey and a type of biscuit. “We use Western techniques and Western desserts, with a bit of an Asian twist or sensibility,” Poon notes.

Poon’s at Somerset House has attracted both new diners and those who frequented Poon’s parents’ restaurants for many years.

“The idea of legacy is quite a heavy one, and it sometimes feels a bit grandiose,” Poon says. “There hasn’t been a Poon’s restaurant open for so long. And yet we’ve had such an extraordinarily warm reception from people who have shared so many memories and stories. Back then, there were fewer restaurants, and my parents were very present. Nowadays, there are so many restaurants that are chains, so people maybe feel they are missing that personal touch.”

The restaurant has been so popular that people are already asking Poon when she might open her next spot. For now, she’s focused on making Poon’s at Somerset House the best it can be, and on expanding the Poon’s offerings online, which include her parents’ wind-dried meats and absolutely delicious chili oil. She has plans to launch a Chinese knife and hopes to expand their range of home goods, as well. “There are more ways for me to help people bring Chinese food into their homes,” she says. “I want to create a platform to celebrate beautiful Chinese things, because I think ‘Made in China’ still gets a bad rep.”

Poon may have taken an unexpected route to arrive at her current destination, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. Like her own career, she’s happy for Poon’s at Somerset House to find its own way—even if it takes a few years.

“I don’t want to be a fad or an instant classic,” she says. “I’d like to be able to put our heads down and focus on our food and get on with it. Being fashionable is not at the essence of what we’re trying to do. If you don’t have that nice Chinese friend to cook for you, we’re here.”

SEE ALSO: Inside the Whitney’s 2026 Art Party: Turning Up the Heat for New York’s Next Gen Patrons

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