Alan Yau, one of London’s top restauranteurs, has sold his two exclusive Michelin-stared Chinese restaurants for $60 million (£30.5 million) to funds owned by Abu Dhabi.

The Times has learnt that Mr Yau, who founded the Wagamama Japanese food chain, sold Hakkasan and Yauatcha to Tasameem, a property arm of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

It is understood that Mr Yau will keep a minority stake in the business and that he decided to sell to raise funds to expand the restaurants overseas, starting with leading cities in Europe and the United States.

One source close to the deal said: “The intention is to take them international, but Mr Yau will still have a lot of his personal wealth in the business.”

The sale indicates that all is going well at the top end of the London restaurant sector, despite worries over the slowdown in consumer spending, and confirms the acquisitive nature of Middle East sovereign wealth funds.

Tasameem owns several hotel chains, but this is the first time that it has moved into the London restaurant scene.

Mr Yau, born in Hong Kong, devised the groundbreaking Wagamama concept in the 1990s, serving noodle soup to time-pressed, budget-conscious urbanites sitting at shared tables. He sold the chain and it has since changed hands between private equity firms numerous times. In 2001, he decided to try his hand at the other end of the gastronomic spectrum with the classy Hakkasan, a Chinese restaurant which quickly proved that there was an appetite for champagne on satin sofas followed by shark’s fin soup costing £40, all served in an underground former garage.

His £4.5 million gamble paid off and it swiftly became one of the most profitable restaurants in London, albeit a wallet-draining one for customers.

In 2004, Mr Yau opened Yauatcha, another top-end Oriental eatery, in Central London, where the waiters wear uniforms designed by Tim Yip, the Oscar-winning clothes designer who created the outfits seen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Zagat’s 2008 restaurant guide says Hakkasan is so legendary that “reservations are traded on the futures market”, adding that “it couldn’t be a cooler place to chill out”.

Zagat deescribes Yauatcha as a sexy split-level restaurant that attracts “a noisy crowd of London’s most attractive yuppies”.

The restaurant offers “interesting teas and exquisite pastries” in the ground floor café, while downstairs lies “dim sum as theatre with innovatative delicacies like melt-in-the-mouth venison puffs”.

Tasameem Group is already working with Hard Rock International to build the first Hard Rock Hotel in Dubai. With a planned 91 floors, it will be worth an estimated $1 billion and is due for completion by 2011. Further Hard Rock hotels could be built in Abu Dhabi, Muscat and Doha.

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