Victoria Face-Off: Shan Shui Social vs Hanbaagaasuuteeki

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Dim Sum Showdown: Shan Shui Social vs Nordic Small Plates

Victoria is not usually sold as a place of culinary identity. It is sold as transit. Trains, offices, briefcases, pre-theatre timetables, people power-walking toward somewhere else. But on Buckingham Palace Road, two restaurants are trying to slow that machinery down in very different ways.

Shan Shui Social leans into 1920s Shanghai fantasy, with dim sum, roast meats, cocktails, and a room built for lingering. Hanbaagaasuuteeki goes the other way. It takes the humble burger, runs it through Korea, Thailand, Japan and China, then serves it fast, loud, and with enough swagger to open practically beside Bleecker and Shake Shack. One is silk, lacquer and steam. The other is potato buns, kimchi heat and red-splashed burger energy. Both are trying to win Victoria on flavour, but they are playing very different games.

Shan Shui Social: Shanghai Glamour, Cantonese Comfort

Shan Shui Social arrives with more theatre. Officially, it pitches itself as a 1920s Shanghai-inspired restaurant, pairing regional Chinese food with a playful, casual-dining sensibility. In practice, that means a polished but unfussy room, cocktails with lychee, calamansi and yuzu, and a menu that moves between Cantonese delicacy and Sichuan heat.

OpenTable places it in the £26 to £40 bracket and describes it as “Casual Elegant,” while SquareMeal notes one-plate lunch specials from around £14 to £16, plus a menu structured around dim sum, roasts, wok dishes, rice and noodles. It is not trying to be a hole-in-the-wall. It wants the date night, the team lunch, the pre-theatre booking, and the birthday table that still wants good dumplings.

The food is the reason to go, but also the reason the concept works. Shan Shui Social does not force you into one register. You can order gently, with shrimp and scallop dumplings and silky cheung fun, or you can push into richer, louder territory with salted egg prawns, mapo tofu, braised aubergine and soy-glazed Chilean sea bass. The point is range. This is a menu built for the table rather than the individual. Even its strongest reviews circle back to that mix of delicacy and abundance: authentic Cantonese flavour, roast meats, dim sum, cocktails, and enough variety to keep a group interested. It feels designed for social appetite rather than private obsession. A burger place asks what you want. Shan Shui asks what everyone wants, then makes sharing look elegant. 

The atmosphere matters almost as much as the menu. Review summaries on OpenTable repeatedly describe the room as stylish, warm and lively, with a buzzy energy that suits celebrations and pre-theatre dinners, while SquareMeal frames it as “elegant yet relaxed.” The official site talks about sophistication wrapped in playfulness, and that feels accurate. This is not old-school Chinatown chaos, nor is it antiseptic luxury. It is mood-managed glamour. The sort of place where the lacquered meats and cocktails are part of the décor. The sort of place that wants you to feel slightly improved by having chosen it. Victoria needs restaurants like that, frankly, because too much of the area still eats like an apology.

Service seems to follow the same brief. OpenTable’s review summary leans hard on “amazing food” and “outstanding service,” and TripAdvisor comments praise the lack of rushing, solid pacing, and good value alongside the central location. That pattern matters. Shan Shui Social is clearly chasing repeat custom from locals, office workers and theatre-goers, not just first-visit novelty. Restaurants built around atmosphere often wobble on service, because the room does too much of the talking. Shan Shui appears to understand that if you want people back for duck, dim sum and cocktails, the front-of-house cannot behave like it resents your existence. Radical stuff, I know. 

Hanbaagaasuuteeki: Burger Maximalism with a Pan-Asian Accent

Hanbaagaasuuteeki is much less interested in seduction. It is interested in impact. It opened in 2025 at 36 Buckingham Palace Road, in the thick of Victoria’s burger cluster, and has been described by Time Out as an “Asian-inspired burger joint” bold enough to plant itself within easy reach of Shake Shack and Bleecker. Hot Dinners says it launched with a tight menu of burgers riffing on Japan, Korea and Thailand, while later reviews show that the menu has expanded, with Time Out noting nine burgers and social posts regularly placing prices in the £9 to £14 range. Where Shan Shui’s luxury is layered and ambient, Hanbaagaasuuteeki’s appeal is immediate. You walk in because you want something messy, specific and a little deranged, in the best possible way. 

Its strongest suit is that the fusion does not sound like a boardroom accident. Time Out praises the more inventive burgers precisely because they do not feel like gimmicks, singling out the shrimp kong baga, a surf-and-turf number with crispy shrimp, smashed beef, cheese and tangy dressing, as the best thing on the menu. Other reviewers highlight the Szechuan chicken burger, miso fries, kimchi-loaded fries and kimchi burger, while Hot Dinners flagged the Isan burger and the off-menu Szechuan chicken sandwich early in the restaurant’s life. This is burger thinking with actual imagination behind it. Not “we added sriracha and called it Asia,” but a proper attempt to create distinct flavour identities across the menu. Sometimes that boldness tips into excess. Wrap Your Lips Around This found the Isan burger more heat than harmony. But even that criticism proves the point. Hanbaagaasuuteeki would rather overshoot than bore you.

The room is part of the charm, though in a completely different register from Shan Shui. Time Out describes high stools, counter-top tables and bright red splashes of colour, comparing it to In-N-Out with a K-pop twist. The Standard saw a blue, red and grey interior that looked almost 16-bit, while London Unattached describes a straightforward layout built around a large central table and bar-style seating, with none of the anonymous self-ordering screen nonsense. DesignMyNight similarly notes a central communal table and counter seating, with background music and a warm neighbourhood feel. That all points to the same thing. Hanbaagaasuuteeki is not a destination for hush or polish. It is a drop-in room with visual punch and just enough personality to keep fast food from feeling disposable. 

Service appears to be one of the reasons the place has built real affection so quickly. London Unattached specifically praises manager Jackson for chatting with diners and guiding them through the menu, calling that kind of personable attention rare in fast food. Google review aggregations show a strong rating trend, and multiple review snippets mention quick, efficient service and unusually engaged staff. That matters because burger restaurants live or die by pace. Nobody wants to wait ages for smashed patties unless they are being forged by dwarves under a volcano. Hanbaagaasuuteeki seems to understand the rhythm. Quick enough for Victoria, friendly enough to feel human, and confident enough to talk you into the weird burger instead of the safe one. 

The Verdict

Shan Shui Social is the more complete restaurant. It has the stronger sense of occasion, the richer atmosphere, the more versatile menu, and the sort of service that can carry lunch, dinner or drinks without changing costume. If you want Victoria to feel glamorous for two hours, this is the better bet. 

Hanbaagaasuuteeki, though, may be the more exciting proposition. It takes a format London knows too well and jolts it awake with Korean, Thai, Japanese and Chinese influences, plus a room and service style that feel lively rather than templated. If Shan Shui is about settling in, Hanbaagaasuuteeki is about hitting hard. 

Together they capture two very different futures for Victoria dining. One says sophistication still matters. The other says fun does too. Steam basket or smashed patty. Lychee cocktail or miso fries. Silk or sizzle. Victoria, improbably, now does both.

Tracey Emin’s Raw Confession Booth

Few artists have turned their own lives into a gallery quite like Tracey Emin. For over three decades, she has invited strangers to witness her pain, her rage, and her memories, often without filter or apology. Now she is preparing something even more intimate. Raw Confession Booth—set to appear among 2026’s most anticipated installations—promises to distil her long practice of exposure into one claustrophobic, luminous room. A space for speaking, not just looking. A confessional to herself and to us.

Emin’s credentials as Britain’s enduring enfant terrible remain intact. Born in 1963 to a Romanichal mother in Margate, her childhood stories have shaped nearly every work she has made. She came of age inside the Young British Artists movement of the 1990s, where provocation was its own art form. Her personal tragedies were never abstracted. The tent embroidered with the names of everyone she had ever slept with—102 entries that spanned lovers, family, and friends—was both diary and sculpture. When that tent burned in a 2004 warehouse fire, she called it a death. That kind of loss, the literal disappearance of her own history, reshaped how she spoke about memory and shame.

Look closer at My Bed (1998), the piece that made her infamous and nearly won her the Turner Prize. What critics called filthy—vodka bottles, used condoms, blood-stained sheets—was in truth a still life of breakdown. The stains and discarded objects were evidence of someone surviving herself. Visitors who expected irony instead found rawness. The work blurred the boundary between exhibitor and exhibited; spectators became voyeurs implicated in her suffering. It was not fiction. It was her actual bed, uncurated debris from a depressive binge that became art history. Few contemporary works have so publicly declared that private chaos is worthy of the museum.

That vulnerability has always been Emin’s power source. Even her neon texts, written in a trembling hand, glow with confession. Some snarl—anger rendered in light—while others whisper a bruised sort of hope. Knowing My Enemy, one of her best-known outdoor pieces, sits on a handmade timber shack that recalls the beach hut she once shared in Whitstable. The sculptures and the handwriting coexist like two halves of one letter: an address from her past to her future self.

So what happens when this forty-year conversation collapses into a single booth? Early descriptions suggest that Raw Confession Booth will fuse sculptural frame and written word, possibly illuminated by her trademark neon, and encourage viewers toward their own catharsis. The booth format is charged with religious resonance—a place for forgiveness, secrecy, rebirth. Yet Emin’s version will likely abandon absolution for honesty. Visitors might be asked to whisper their truths, to be heard and possibly recorded by the artwork itself. If My Bed made its audience her witness, this booth may make them her accomplices.

This mature Emin is both Royal Academician and survivor, still fearless in her self-exposure but more deliberate about its invitation. She is no longer only dramatizing trauma; she is architecting empathy. In a time when digital oversharing is effortless but rarely meaningful, Raw Confession Booth could restore weight to confession itself. It asks whether saying everything can still set us free—or at least make us feel seen.

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