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Noodle & Beer is sending us to the moon and back with an exclusive mooncake and cocktail pairing for Mid-Autumn festival

September 11, 2026

By:

RESET team

Even if you don’t know much about Mid-Autumn Festival (or know nothing at all), you would have seen images of streets and parks light up with huge red lanterns, sometimes shaped like animals or symbols. Something springing to mind?

This Chinese and East Asian festival (called Mid-Autumn or Moon festival) marks the end of harvest season, and falls on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar (so 25 September this year).

It’s a major holiday across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other parts of East and Southeast Asia, and families celebrate it by being together and – most importantly – eating some delicious sweet treats and delicacies, particularly mooncakes.

Want in on the party? This year, the restaurant Noodle & Beer is marking the festival with an exclusive mooncake and cocktail pairing menu at its Chinatown and Spitalfields sites, running from 19 August to 25 September. The Sichuan spice restaurant has built its 2026 offering around three mooncake flavours, each matched to a bespoke cocktail from its mixology team, alongside a limited-edition gift set.

Here’s the full rundown:

The full mooncakes and pairing cocktails menu

A bit of an education piece before we get started: if you haven’t tried a mooncake before, this is a round cake with a thin outer crust and a rich, dense sweet filling. The most traditional version has lotus seed paste and one or more salted egg yolks inside, meant to represent the full moon – but modern versions branch out a lot.

Noodle & Beer’s mooncakes come in three varieties: custard, chocolate and matcha. Each one has been given its own cocktail companion.

Matcha Made in Heaven takes Don Q Reserva 7 rum and blends it with coconut milk, matcha tea and cacao, cutting through the richness of the matcha mooncake.
Strawberry Velvet uses the same rum base but swaps in strawberry alongside cacao and coconut milk, matched to the chocolate mooncake.
The Full Moon Whisky Sour is more classic: Toki whisky, yuzu, lemon and sugar, paired with the custard mooncake.

Do note: this special selection doesn’t replace the existing menu, so you can still work your way through Noodle & Beer’s regular spread of sizzling starters before popping downstairs to the sultry red bar for a cheeky cocktail and mooncake afterwards. If you’re keen to dine here, the crispy beef jerky and succulent chicken, along with the courgette fries with lemon pepper and Persian spices, are two long-standing favourites.

From left to right: The Full Moon Whisky Sour with a custard mooncake, the Matcha Made In Heaven with the matcha mooncake, and the Strawberry Velvet with the chocolate mooncake

Deluxe mooncake gift set

Want to keep the Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations going at home? Noodle & Beer has also put together a £75 Deluxe Mooncake Gift Set, which is a rather lovely (and fancy!) way to treat yourself or others. If you’re aiming for top-tier gifting credentials, this will certainly help your case.

Inside are four artisan mooncake flavours – Chunky Red Bean, Chestnut, Taiwan Pineapple and Firewood Black Sesame – none of which feature on the dine-in menu, making the set the only way to try this particular quartet. Alongside them, there’s a handcrafted Longquan Celadon cup, a bamboo lantern stand and a greeting card, so there’s plenty to make the box feel like a proper gift, not just something you picked up from the bakery on your way home.

You can order it here. Quantities are limited, and Noodle & Beer hasn’t confirmed exactly how many sets are available, so if you’ve already identified the recipient – or decided that recipient is, in fact, you – it’s worth ordering fast.