Tattu London is the kind of restaurant that understands exactly what modern Soho dining can be when it leans fully into atmosphere. Perched on the rooftop of The Now Building above Denmark Street, it brings together contemporary Chinese cooking, a dramatic design language, cocktails, skyline energy, and the sort of polished theatricality that turns dinner into a full evening out. In the Funky London Restaurants category, this is one of the clearest examples of a place where the room, the mood, and the menu are all working toward the same stylish objective.

A Restaurant Designed for Experience First

Tattu’s own description of the London location says it was designed with respect for craftsmanship and inspired by the traditional Chinese courtyard house, and that is a useful place to begin because it explains why the restaurant feels more immersive than merely decorative. This is not just a nice rooftop with a fashionable menu attached. The brand identity is built around experiential dining, and at the London address that idea comes through in a particularly strong way. The restaurant aims for elegance and elevation at the same time, which sounds like marketing language until you actually understand the setting: central London, high above the street, wrapped in a room that wants the guest to feel transported.

That is what makes Tattu such a natural fit for this category. Funky London Restaurants do not always need to be ironic, chaotic, or youth-culture driven. Sometimes the funk comes from total commitment to a point of view. Tattu has that commitment. It is sleek, stylized, and clearly built to deliver more than a meal. You come here for dinner, but also for energy, for atmosphere, for a certain kind of glossy London moment that feels ideal for a date, a celebration, or a night when the city should feel a little more cinematic than usual.

Tattu London is funky in a high-gloss Soho register: elevated, photogenic, and fully committed to making dinner feel like an occasion.

The Room: Rooftop Drama with a Distinct Point of View

The official site presents Tattu London as an elevated dining experience, and that phrasing actually fits. The room is not restrained. It is polished, layered, and clearly made for impact, with a visual identity that gives the restaurant immediate personality. Because the venue sits on the rooftop of The Now Building on Denmark Street, there is already a sense of lift and separation from the street below, and Tattu uses that setting to its advantage. It feels urban, glamorous, and choreographed in the way many London diners now actively want: not necessarily quiet, not necessarily traditional, but memorable.

The Phoenix Bar deepens that identity even further. Tattu’s own bar page describes it as a stylish atmosphere of contemporary and Eastern elegance, positioned as either the opening move of the night or a romantic finish to it. That detail matters because it shows the restaurant is conceived as more than a single dining room. It is an entire evening environment. In practical terms, that means Tattu works especially well for guests who want a complete hospitality experience rather than simply a good main course. The place understands pre-theatre energy, post-work glamour, and the social importance of a first cocktail before the meal properly begins.

The Food: Contemporary Chinese Built for Sharing and Pleasure

The official event brochure explains the structure of Tattu’s food particularly well: the menus are divided into sections such as dim sum, small plates, large plates, sides, and desserts, following a social style of dining where food lands in the centre of the table to be shared. That tells you a lot about how to read the menu. This is not a rigid starter-main-dessert format. It is a modern, high-impact sharing menu built around rhythm, contrast, and collective pleasure. That suits the room perfectly. In a place this visually charged, food needs to come with momentum, variety, and enough personality not to disappear into the décor.

The current London à la carte menu does exactly that. The opening section moves from lobster dumplings and surf & turf shumai to aromatic duck spring rolls and Peking duck pancakes, while the middle of the menu expands into dishes like spicy sesame tuna tartare, glazed beef short rib, X.O. scallop skewers, and sugar salt crispy squid. Then come the larger signatures, where Tattu becomes even more legible: black pepper beef fillet, red pepper lamb cutlets, Szechuan seabass, wasabi lobster, white miso salmon, and Shanghai black cod. The menu is clearly built for contemporary London tastes. It offers richness, sweetness, spice, texture, and enough luxury cues to feel aligned with the rooftop setting without becoming indistinct or generic.

What Eating Here Is Really About

Eating at Tattu is less about chasing purity and more about giving yourself over to a mood that has been carefully composed. The meal is meant to build. You start with something dramatic from the dim sum section, add one or two bright or crisp plates from the middle of the menu, then move into larger mains that bring deeper sauces and richer textures. This is one of those restaurants where ordering well is part of the fun. A table with too many heavy dishes will flatten itself too early, but a table with contrast feels genuinely satisfying. That is where Tattu becomes stronger than critics of “style-first” restaurants often expect.

It also helps that the menu knows exactly what kind of guest it is serving. The dishes are not timid. They are meant to be liked. They are designed to arrive beautifully, to read clearly, and to suit an energetic dining room. There is something refreshing about that confidence. Tattu does not behave like a hidden neighborhood secret. It behaves like a destination. In a central London context, especially one tied to theatre, nightlife, and occasion dining, that is often precisely the right move.

To Try

Tattu London’s current menus make the strongest orders easy to identify.

Peking Duck Pancakes — One of the house’s clearest signature sharing dishes, served with Szechuan, cucumber, and spring onion, and exactly the kind of order that sets the tone for the table.

Shanghai Black Cod — A polished large plate with hoisin, ginger, and lime, and one of the menu’s best examples of Tattu’s glossy, crowd-pleasing style.

Asian Pear Sticky Toffee Pudding — A smart finish with cinnamon, vanilla, and poached pear, and the sort of dessert that keeps the meal feeling indulgent right to the end.

Why It Matters in London Right Now

Tattu matters because it understands a very current version of London dining: guests want food, of course, but they also want setting, story, and a room that feels socially alive. This restaurant responds directly to that reality without pretending otherwise. The rooftop location, the carefully constructed mood, the Phoenix Bar, the shareable menu, and the broader sense of spectacle all work together to create a place that feels entirely contemporary. It knows its city and its audience.

That is why it deserves a place in any guide to funky London restaurants. The funk here comes through glamour and intention. Some restaurants become memorable because they are eccentric. Tattu becomes memorable because it is so well branded, so visually assertive, and so clearly built for the modern idea of going out. It gives London a type of polished theatrical dining room that feels appropriate to Soho right now: energetic, attractive, and unafraid to be a little larger than life.

Timing, Practical Notes, and How to Approach It

The official site lists Tattu London as open Monday to Sunday from 12pm until late, which makes it useful across several kinds of occasions rather than only one. It works for a stylish lunch, a full evening dinner, a celebratory booking, or pre-theatre dining given its central location and the restaurant’s own promotions around nearby West End shows. That flexibility is part of the appeal. A venue like this could easily have felt locked into one narrow use case, but instead it seems designed to move across the rhythms of the day while keeping the same upscale identity.

The best way to do Tattu is to lean into the format. Start with the room, have a drink, and order for the table rather than for individual lanes. A dim sum opener, a cold or crisp small plate, one seafood main, one meat main, a side, rice or noodles, and dessert is usually the strongest structure. This is not the place to rush or to under-order. It is a place to let the sequence unfold. If the point is to enjoy one of London’s more polished theatrical dining experiences, then the best strategy is simply to give the restaurant enough space to be what it is.

Our Insight

What makes Tattu London work is that it never tries to separate food from atmosphere. The venue, the cocktail culture, the central rooftop setting, and the sharing menu all belong to one coherent idea. That coherence is what many fashionable restaurants miss. They may have the room but not the food, or the food but not the identity. Tattu’s strength is that the guest can understand the restaurant almost immediately. It is modern, elevated, glamorous, and social, and everything from the address to the menu reinforces that.

For OvenSource readers, that makes it an easy recommendation within this category. It is not the quietest, most intimate, or most classically restrained table in London, nor is it trying to be. It is one of the clearest examples of a destination restaurant that understands contemporary appetite in all its forms: appetite for flavor, for design, for shared plates, for cocktails, and for the feeling that a night out should actually feel like a night out. That clarity gives Tattu real purpose.

If you want a London rooftop dinner with modern Chinese plates, strong visual identity, and the kind of atmosphere that turns the whole evening into part of the meal, Tattu is the table.

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