Din Tai Fung, the Taiwanese dumpling chain operated in the UK under franchise by Singapore’s BreadTalk Group, will open its fifth London restaurant at Lewis Cubitt Walk in King’s Cross this December. The site adds to existing restaurants in Covent Garden, Selfridges, Centre Point and Canary Wharf, eight years after the brand’s UK debut.
Din Tai Fung was founded in Taiwan and has grown into a global chain of more than 180 restaurants across Asia, North America, the UAE and the UK, best known for its xiaolongbao soup dumplings. Its UK restaurants are run under franchise by Taster Food UK, a joint venture in which BreadTalk Group, the Singapore-listed bakery and restaurant operator, is the major shareholder alongside Din Tai Fung’s Taiwan-based owners and other investors. The King’s Cross site will include a 30-cover space for private dining and masterclasses alongside its main 160-cover restaurant.
160-cover restaurant opens in King’s Cross this December
The new restaurant will occupy Lewis Cubitt Walk in the King’s Cross development, opening in December 2026. It becomes Din Tai Fung’s fifth London site, following restaurants at Covent Garden, inside Selfridges on Oxford Street, at Centre Point and at Canary Wharf, each in a different type of location: a West End dining destination, a department store food hall, a mixed-use office tower and a Docklands business district. King’s Cross adds a fifth format, inside a mixed retail and office development built around a redeveloped rail terminus. Taster Food UK has not said whether it plans further openings beyond London, and has given no figure for total UK investment in the King’s Cross site or across the estate.
UK restaurants run under franchise by BreadTalk’s Taster Food UK
BreadTalk Group confirmed the structure behind Din Tai Fung’s UK entry in a corporate announcement ahead of the brand’s first London restaurant, which opened in 2018: a joint venture named Taster Food UK, with BreadTalk’s Together Inc. as major shareholder alongside Din Tai Fung Taiwan, the brand’s owner Fairy Rise Development, a UK partner and a Taiwanese investor. That is a genuine master franchise structure rather than a licensing deal, but it is held by the joint venture rather than open to individual UK applicants: every Din Tai Fung site in the UK, including King’s Cross, is operated by Taster Food UK itself.
Good to know
Din Tai Fung’s UK sites are genuinely franchised, but the franchise is held by a single joint venture, Taster Food UK, not open to individual applicants, unlike the more conventional route set out in our guide to opening a franchise in England.
Fifth site continues a steady expansion since 2018
Din Tai Fung has added roughly one London restaurant every year and a half since its 2018 debut, a measured pace against some of the faster-moving restaurant franchises entering the UK this year. Taster Food UK has not announced a target for total UK site numbers, and has not said whether King’s Cross will be followed by a restaurant outside London, where the brand has no presence so far. The King’s Cross opening adds Din Tai Fung to a development that already carries a dense mix of restaurants and food halls, making it a further test of the area’s appeal to premium Asian dining concepts and giving Taster Food UK a fifth data point on how different London formats perform for the brand.
