Three Bowls is a small Hainanese restaurant on Lower Clapton Road, cooking the food of Hainan, the island that is China’s southernmost province. It sits a few doors down from Mambow, whose chef-owner Abby Lee counts it among her favourite places to eat in London.
Inside you'll find a fairly simple, minimal dining room with space for a few guests to sit in.
Hainanese chicken rice is the dish most people know from the island, and it anchors the menu here. Slow-poached chicken is served at room temperature with fragrant Hainanese rice, ginger and spring onion sauce, chilli sauce and seasonal greens, and you can order a half bird to share. Noodles make up the rest of the core menu: Hainan gravy noodles, Haikou marinated dry noodles, a five-spice beef noodle soup, a Hainan-style tom yam seafood noodle soup and stir-fried kueh teow. Larger pots for the table include a Hainan fish pot and a vegan Buddha pot, while rice dishes extend to beef brisket with a marinated egg, and mapo tofu.
Smaller plates are worth building a meal around, too. A cool salad of cucumber, fungus and yuba (tofu skin) cuts through richer dishes, and there’s fried enoki, salt and pepper squid, prawn hargow, chicken xiao long bao and homemade prawn crackers. To finish, qing bu liang is a Hainanese sweet soup made with coconut milk and a medley of toppings.
The menu marks vegetarian and gluten-free dishes, but anyone with allergies should check with the team before ordering. Much of the menu is also available for delivery.