Dinner for 3 with several beers: £60

This meal began with an email from Inge (of whom I have written before and who’s taste in food is impeccable) saying that she and Jackie had eaten in a Szechuan restaurant and had thought of me and would I like to join them for a meal.  Silly question really.

When I arrived Inge was running a little late so Jackie and I started off with some beers and lamb shashlik which I’ve never seen on a Szechuan menu before. But regardless of its authenticity to the Szechuan region of China you should definitely order if you should ever eat here because it is amazing.  It was so amazing that I was not at all concerned about it being served on a child’s plastic Christmas themed plate.  It could have arrived in a shoe I still would have eaten it.

Lamb Shashlik

We opted to skip any other starters and ordered three mains instead.  The first was aubergine with peppers and potatoes in a garlic sauce.  It was divine.  This is not a dish to order on a first date however as all three of us absolutely reeked of garlic for quite some time after the meal.

Aubergine with peppers and potatoes in garlic sauce

Next was spicy beef with chili.  I had hoped that the dish would melt my face off but it was surprisingly mild.  I wouldn’t order it again if only for the fact that it was just fine – but not fantastic.

Chili Crab

My favorite dish of the evening was their version of chili crab.  This is not the chili crab you would get in Singapore.  I.e. its not saucy.  It is a pungent and fragrant dish of deep fried crab smothered in whole szechuan peppercorns and dried chilis.  The perfume of the dish was incredible.

The restaurant no longer has only 2 menus in English – they have plenty now and the service was quite a bit friendlier than I had expected.  I would still get there early as there was a line out the door by the time we were done with our meal.

Gourmet San
261 Bethnal Green Rd
London, E2 6

Dinner for 1:  £25.00 without wine or beer

No no not that Four Seasons. This one is even better.

I have some simple rules I live by.  One of which is that if someone from Singapore tells you that there is a restaurant they go to almost straight off of the plane when they visit London then one should go to that restaurant – immediately.  So when no fewer then 3 Singaporeans sang the praises of the duck at Four Seasons I simply had no choice but to give it a try.

I arrived at 7pm on a Tuesday night and they were packed to the rafters with people waiting for tables.  I momentarily considered take away but then I remembered that this is not a blog about eating on your couch in your flat or hotel room so I put my name down for a table for 1 and expected to see every other person seated before me.

The loud, scary woman in charge of the list told me I should expect to wait between 20 – 30 minutes for a table so I calculated 45 minutes at least.  I was therefore surprised when 10 minutes into my wait I was shown to my table.

I forgo the starters and decide to try some vegetarian main courses to balance out the aforementioned duck as a nod to “healthy” eating.  The whole healthy eating concept idea goes straight out the window however when I spy deep fried tofu with salt, pepper and fresh chili.

Deep fried tofu with salt and pepper

It is crunchy and not at all greasy and those rounds of chili you see in the photo are wicked little things.  Its a very flavorful dish and I have already ordered it again on a subsequent visit.

Next up I have Chinese black mushrooms and bamboo shoots which are two of my favorite things.  Black mushrooms are very good for your immune system and that is a good excuse for me to eat them whenever I come across them.  The dish is perfectly fine – nothing to write home about but a good accompaniment to the other dishes.  (I have since had their morning glory in garlic sauce and highly recommend that dish).

Chinese black mushrooms with bamboo shoots

All of this though is merely prelude to the main act.  The reason I was willing to stand in a cramped entryway of a packed restaurant on a Tuesday – the duck.

In Chinese restaurants in London aromatic crispy duck is a ubiquitous menu item and Peking duck is also fairly prevalent.  But that is not the duck you come here for.  You come here for Cantonese style roast duck.  If you come here and you don’t order this duck you are – sorry to put it this way – a complete idiot.

Cantonese Roast Duck and Char Siu

I ordered a combination plate of the duck and pork (Char Siu).  Its a beauty.  It looks perfect – dark lacquered crispy skin on the duck and caramelized crunchy skin on the pork all swimming in some delicious looking dark sauce.   I expect it to be good based upon the look, the smell and the countless recommendations – but I am not quite prepared for just how good it really is when i take my first bite.  My notes literally say “Holy s**t that’s good duck!”  And oh my it really really is.

Whatever it has been glazed in is amazing.  Sweet but not cloying or sticky.  The skin is crispy but not chewy and the meat itself is juicy without being oily as duck can sometimes be.   At this point I am swooning.  I am sitting alone at my table rolling my eyes and making happy faces when I realize a couple at a table nearby are staring at me.  I ignore them and go back to my reverie.

Oh yeah the char siu was good too.

I should mention that I have seen several reviews which complained about the service but I have to say I found the service really efficient and pleasant and I was not rushed out despite the heaving crowds at the front.  I’ve since been back and had the same friendly if not overly gentle service.

The point of all of this is that you should go.  Go alone, go with friends, grab some strangers – whatever it takes.

Four Seasons
84 Queensway
London, W2 3RL

Recommend by Eating in Translation

It goes without saying that I find a lot of the restaurants I try by reading other food blogs. One of my all time favorites is Eating in Translation. Dave Cook manages to try an unbelievable number of restaurants, stores, events, etc and I check his site daily for inspiration for new food adventures. And I can honestly say his site has never steered me to a bad meal.

So last weekend when the Alsatian and I were planning an epic walk from our place in Brooklyn to Union Square I checked the blog out for a good place to go in Chinatown – which conveniently was at the midway point of our walk.   I am a sucker for a good bowl of noodles so we decided to try some tasty hand pulled ones.

Lunch for two: $12.50

About 3 miles into our 6.5 mile route we stopped in to refuel at this diminutive restaurant.  The friendly waitress showed us to one end of a long communal table with a couple at the other end eagerly slurping away at their lunch.  From our spot we had a perfect vantage point to watch the actual hand pulling of the noodles.

If you’ve never seen noodles being hand pulled it is quite a fascinating sight.  I would love to know exactly how it is that a single blob of dough becomes a pile of thin noodles without any pasta machine or knives of any kind – it is a pretty amazing process that involves some considerable dexterity which I almost certainly lack.  There is a lot of twisting and twirling and voila noodles. 

You can get any style of noodle they offer with any topping in soup or dry (fried). We started with an order of shredded pork chop knife pealed noodles which as the name might suggest are cut rather than pulled.  I have to admit I was a little disappointed when they placed the dish down in front of us but it what it lacked in color it made up for in taste.   It was actually quite good and we left nothing on the plate.

Shredded Pork Chop Knife Pealed Noodles

Eating in Translation mentioned being underwhelmed with the quality of the fishballs so we opted for short ribs in our soup instead.  It looked really promising when it hit the table.   A generous portion of noodles, greens and short ribs.

Shredded Pork Chop Knife Pealed Noodles

When I tasted the soup I thought the noodles were yummy and as fresh as could be but the broth was a little thin on flavor. I must’ve been giving off some kind of disappointment vibe because the waitress bolted over to point out the fresh cilantro and chili sauce on the table.   These additions really made the meal.   The sauce was a chili sesame mix that was fantastic and really added a punch to the soup.  This turned the soup from ok to really good.

Chilli Sauce that I really loved

We left rested and fueled up and ready to finish our walk. This would be a perfect place to come on your own though don’t expect to have a table all to yourself if you do.

Tasty Hand Pulled Noodles
1 Doyers St
New York, NY 10013

Meal for 1: £ 12.30 (no drinks)

My least favorite thing about eating out in London is the presence of so many fast food chains masquerading as restaurants where your food is generally made somewhere else, trucked in and microwaved for you. I avoid chains as much as possible so it was not without some trepidation that I purposefully entered a shopping mall in London with the express intention of eating at a chain – Cha Cha Moon.

Having eating a Hakkasan and Yauatcha (and yes of course Wagamana) I figured I would make an exception since I really enjoyed Hakkasan and this looks like a perfect option for eating on your own when feeling lazy (as I was indeed feeling that night).

The location I tried is in Whiteley’s Shopping Mall on Queensway stuck between a Yo! Sushi (meh) and a Cafe Rouge (ich) but I carried on undeterred. Pretty quiet at 7:30 on a Friday evening, the friendly hostess took me right over to a nice narrow table that is clearly meant for a couple sitting next to each other or for a person eating on their own. This is a nice touch because if you’ve ever eating at a Wagamama or similar joint you almost always end up surrounding by loud groups. No risk of that here.

I didn’t expect to see anything interesting on the menu but right there in front of me was an invitation to eat taro – one of my faves – in the form of a taro cake. Taro is a starchy tuber and therefore it logically has the consistency of mashed potatoes – which i love.  The thing is, this was a sort of lightened up version – it was fine – but it missed that comfort food thing that taro has.  It was also topped with a pork floss mixture that was so salty I was afraid I might develop hypertension right on the spot.

Taro Cake

The other thing that bothered me a bit was that the taro cake arrived approximately 90 seconds after I ordered it which made me nervous – though I could not see any microwaves in the open kitchen no matter how much I craned my neck.

For my main I ordered something called Fujian Style Udon – which advertised itself as including prawns, squid, fishcake and pork belly.  It sounded very promising.

Fujian Style Udon

They were a little skimpy on everything but what really got me was that I could not find any evidence of pork belly in the dish and it was not until I got my face so close to the plate that my nose was in my noodles that I could detect tiny little pieces of something that might have been pork belly.

When you say you have pork belly in a dish that raises the expectation of getting to sink your teeth into succulent chunks of crunchy fatty pork visible to the naked eye.  Not teeny tiny flakes of something that was probably just bacon.

And lastly I could do without the odd humidifiers bolted to the ceiling hissing out steam into the room every few moments.  Not sure what effect they were going for but they sound like the hydraulic brakes on a bus or truck.  Bus depot is not generally the kind of atmosphere I am after in a restaurant.

If this restaurant was my only option for Asian food I might try it again but since it isn’t I will likely give it a pass and head to one of the restaurants nearby on Queensway.

Cha Cha Moon
151 Queensway
London W2 4YN