Stanley Kwai Tsun Tse meeting the then Prince Charles

IF you’ve ever noshed down on a delicious noodle supper in Chinatown, you might have the late community leader Stanley Kwai Tsun Tse to thank.

And now his role in shaping one of London’s most treasured cultural hubs will be honoured with a tribute plaque above the supermarket where it all began.

Westminster City Council is moving ahead with plans to use its “green plaque” scheme to mark the contribution made by Mr Tse, who died in January 2022.

He set up the See Woo supermarket in Lisle Street in 1975, a pioneering venture which helped draw more Chinese restaurants into the area.

It was See Woo which supplied the ingredients used by so many of them. Expanded across four units now, it still does.

See Woo

Mr Tse had moved to the United Kingdom from Hong Kong when he was just 17, once joking to China ­Daily: “All you needed was a letter of invitation to get your passport. I told my brother that if he didn’t give me a letter, I would become a policeman, which was considered very risky.

“He soon changed his mind and sent me the letter.”

In the 1970s See Woo became popular with Chinese people living in London, but also helped bring a new cuisine to British diets.

He claimed that he was the first person to bring pak choi to dinner tables here.

The success of the supermarket, and later a company with different branches and a multi-million-pound turnover, meant he was able to make regular charitable donations to causes which interested him.

He was the head of the Chinatown Association and organised the annual parade through the area.

The city council has approved the decision to erect the plaque and is now going through the planning application process.

The building already has a plaque dedicated to cinema historian Wilfred Ernest Lytton Day who had a shop there until 1969.