Bar Shu is a very interest restaurant in Soho. Being outside the normal Chinatown catchement you wouldn’t quite expect to find a good restaurant here, especially as at night this area is a bit seedy (be warned, my female Chinese friend got accosted when she went out to make a phone-call).

The food is styled from the Sichuan region and as such many of the dishes are very hot and spicy. The restaurant’s signiture dish is a fish in chilli oil dish. Very spicy without much else which was a disapointment.
Helpful hint however, the restaurant will let you take the chilli’s home with you in a box, perfect to flavor dishes for weeks to come :)

Other dishes are above-average to excellent and as such I am always happy to come to this place. There is a lot of space inside, including some private rooms but I’ve found on Fridays it is very full and you might want to book, (There’s no where to sit inside waiting to be seated).

Prices are moderate to high, I think the £20 estimate another reviewer mentioned is probably on the low-side but is possible if you stick to Green Tea and don’t take the very large dishes such as the fish above.

I’ve been to China for a number of months before and sadly I’ve yet to find a Restaurant that really matches the food I had in the different provinces. However Bar Shu really does make a good attempt at it and I’d honestly recommend you try it at least once, (remember to order some tap water!) :)

Overpriced, greasy, uninspired. Stay away. Luckily, plenty of other Chinese restaurant options nearby

Probably my favourite Chinese restaurant in the whole of the UK, and the only place I've been to where the food tastes so authentic you could actually be paying 50p a head. Of course, you're not, you're in Soho and you're paying more like 20 quid a head, but the illusion is nice until you get the bill. Having said that, if you factor in that I paid 700 quid to fly to Chengdu to eat this stuff, it's relatively good value.

The weird taste sensation (ma) you get from the pepper corns has to be experienced. It's almost like going to the dentists and having your gums injected, in the best possible sense of that experience! I'm a massive fan of potatoes in Chinese cooking too, which is something you seem to get in Sichuanese stew-style dishes. They really soak up the complex array of flavours... and well, I'm salivating just thinking about it. I must get some breakfast...

FIRE!!! Wow. Hottest food I’ve had in London. I probably drank a gallon of water with my meal – which was delicious. Service was impeccable and the dining area is lovely. Seems popular with the Chinatown crowd. It’s a nice restaurant for special occasions, but I’d only take proper foodies and willing palettes.

Tucked on the corner of Frith Street we were tempted in by looking at the plate of food the restaurant's solo diner was eating.

The nice thing about this was that you got very mouthwatering looking photographs of the food in the menu which completely lived up to how the dishes tasted.

You'll be able to have a few sad laughs at the weirder translations - "whacked cucumber", "strange flavoured dish", "numbing flavours" - but the food was yummy and in many cases as hot as the dishes look and the previous reviewer has mentioned.

This is a really great sichuanese restaurant which makes a really refreshing change from the very many average cantonese restaurants which have flourished in london because most english people have no idea about real Chinese food. Anyway, sichuan food is characterised by ingredients such as the sichuanese pepper which are ma (numbing) and la (spicy). The Gongbao Chicken is great, and try a Shuizhu fish if you're in the mood for some real spice. Hopefully Bar Shu and other restaurants like it will start pushing up the standard of chinese food in england and allow it to lose its reputation for being sweet and oily.