Wong Kei (Chinese: 旺記; pinyin: wàng jì) is a Chinese restaurant in London's Chinatown. It is one of the largest Chinese restaurants in the UK with seating for around 500 diners.
Wong Kei is situated at 41–43 Wardour Street, which used to belong to Willy Clarkson (1861–1934), a famous theatrical wig maker and costumier, as attested by the 1966 blue plaque[1] on the facade.
"It was designed by the architect H. M. Wakeley. Inscriptions record that the wig-making business was established in 1833, that Sarah Bernhardt laid the foundation stone of the present building in 1904 and Sir Henry Irving the coping stone in 1905. Street directories show that Clarkson's occupied the premises from 1905 until 1940."[2]
"The building contains four storeys and a garret. The front, with a width of three broad windows, is designed in a style combining Baroque and art nouveau forms, realised in brick and green stone with buff stone dressings. The doorway is centred between display windows, and at either end of the ground floor an Ionic pilaster with garlanded capital supports a great bracket-stop upon which stands a large urn with a tall conical top."[2]
"The outer windows of the three floors above are in canted bays faced with green stone and contained in tall recesses, three storeys high, with stone surrounds finished with segmental pediments broken to receive small iron-railed balconies serving a pedimented dormer behind, and beneath each balcony is a large foliated cartouche."[2]
"On either side of the flat-headed central first-floor window is a cartouche, one inscribed 'Estb. 1833', the other 'Rebt. 1904'. From the centre of the second floor is suspended on wrought-iron brackets a double faced clock inscribed 'Costumier Perruquier' on both sides. On either side of the door metal plaques record the visits of Bernhardt and Irving mentioned above."[2]
In 1972, another Chinese restaurant, called Lee Ho Fook occupied the ground floor of the building.