Royal China, Royal China, 24-26 Baker Street, London W1U 3BZ – Pre-CNY dinner

Having spent 10 minutes in Royal China Club on Baker Street, taking pictures of the aquarium, lobsters, their interior and even their manager, it was slightly (only slightly) embarrassing to be told by our friends that we were in the wrong restaurant.

The one we were supposed to be in was the one without the word Club in it (Club denoting the more expensive, superior one).

At least now I can say I’ve been to Royal China Club.

This is the one we should have gone to in the first place, Royal China on Baker Street. Without the club or the lobsters. If you see the lobster, you’re in the wrong one, buddy.

While we waited in the waiting area, I saw:

- (Through the decorative trees) A plate of fried noodles with lots and lots (and I mean lots) of lobster being dished out. I so wanted to ask if I could snap a picture of that, but my friends would have been upset if we got thrown out of the restaurant, so I didn’t.

- (On the reception counter) A plate of dried festive sweets, mostly dehydrated fruits like plums, ginger, that sort of thing. This is the traditional thing served to guests when they come visiting during the festive period.

- (At the waiting area) A kid asking the waitress for some Chupa Chups lollypops.

As we were ushered to our table (bizarrely, 2 small tables for our group of 10 instead of one big table), I chose to sit in the middle of the 2 tables, to allow for maximum snappy opportunities.

You know the restaurant is upper-class when the spoon looks like this.

I don’t know how it’s like in other Chinese restaurants around the world, but in the UK, most of the Chinese restaurants I’ve been to have different menus for Chinese-literate people and non-Chinese-literate people.

I fall into that second, less impressive category. This means that all the nice, traditional and chef-recommended dishes are out-of-bounds to me, and the only time I get to taste these are when Chinese-literate friends order for me.

This was what one of my friends did, and so, the prices stated here are only estimates based on my quick read of the receipt at the end of the dinner.

Pickled vegetables, or ‘ham choy’ (I sure hope this was free of charge)

I didn’t check the receipt to see how much this was, but considering the fact that it tasted similar to what you can get from the Chinese supermarket (30p a pack), I would not have expected a restaurant of this standard to charge us for it.

Roasted peanuts with skin on (hopefully free of charge again)

In between the ordering and the arrival of the food, I made small talk while playing the Karate Kid Catches Peanut With Chopstick game, thereby impressing all the diners around, including my friends with my dinner table etiquette.

The Soup of Inexplicable Pricing

Gon choy thong (dehydrated vegetables in soup with pork) £60 for 11 portions (yes, £60)

Soup of inexplicable pricing is not how this was described when we ordered it. In fact, when my friend ordered it, she asked if there was a ‘lai thong’ meaning something like ‘complementary soup’. Some Chinese restaurants serve complementary soup so this wasn’t a completely off-the-wall question.

When we all had had our portion, the waiters kept offering us top-ups and so of course some of us said yes. To be fair, the soup was very tasty, the meat was good and overall it was one of the nicer soups I’ve had from a Chinese restaurant.

When the bill came (I know I’m jumping to the end of the story), we saw that the soup was priced at £60 for 11 portions and some of us began to laugh hysterically at that point. After the hysterical laughter had subsided, we questioned the waiter and it turned out that no, the soup wasn’t free after all.

In fact, this bowl of what seemed like water with some vegetables and meat costs £5 per bowl. If we’d known that at the start of the meal, we would have been there for hours consuming bowl after bowl of it.

Ching chau tau miu (pea shoots stir fried with garlic) approximately £10

This was one of the freshest, greenest and tastiest versions of the vegetable I’ve had. It didn’t look like what I’ve had before, in fact it was more similar to spinach but each bite was crunchy, fresh and very green. The garlic did not overpower the dish at all, but went very well with it and allowed the natural flavour to shine through.

Char siew (BBQ roast pork) approximately £10 a portion

This wasn’t anywhere as nice as the char siew I’ve had in other restaurants, especially the ones in Malaysia. It’s probably obvious that the meat was dry and not very tasty, even though it was brightly coloured. The sauce did nothing for the meat, where usually char siew sauce is excellent with plain rice but this sauce just kinda sat on the plate with the char siew, not being fabulous.

Siew ngap (roast duck) £40 per duck

This duck was in fact, one of the nicest ducks I’ve had in the UK. In fact, it’s comparable to the roast duck from Four Seasons, which is THE benchmark if you know your roast ducks. The skin was crispy, and very well flavoured. The meat was moist and the sauce was just the nice balance of sweet and salty.

The other diners wimped out on the duck (perhaps wisely eating some of the other dishes and not just duck) so I reckon I ate about half of the duck without complaining once.

Deep fried scallops with garlic and pepper, approximately £10 per portion

The Chinese description for this dish involved flowers and other fancy words and as I didn’t have the menu (but wouldn’t have understood it even if I did), I don’t know what this was called.

Each scallop was huge, but perhaps it shouldn’t have been deep fried as the texture was more like that of fish-cake by the time it was cooked. Tasty though, with salt, garlic and pepper being the main flavours, but the texture would have been better if it wasn’t that chewy.

Pei pa taufoo (tofu with minced pork) approximately £10

It seems different restaurants have different versions of this dish. I’m not sure if I’ve had it before, but this version was delicious. The tofu was minced and mixed with some fish and pork (I guess) and deep-fried. The sauce was a good accompaniment to the tofu, making the batter slightly soft and full of sauce. The vegetables that came with the dish were fresh, very green and just so tender to the bite.

The tofu in the bowl.

Cheng ching yu (steamed fish with plain sauce) approximately £30 a fish

The plain sauce is actually a combination of soy sauce, Chinese wine and garlic oil but because it is the most common sauce used when steaming fish, it is referred to as plain sauce.

This looks like a sea bass, but I’m not sure. As far as my knowledge of fish goes, this could be a tilapia and I wouldn’t know the difference (unless of course, a tilapia and a sea bass are the same thing).

The fish was steamed well, perhaps slightly too well, but the texture was still fluffy and the sauce went well with the rice.

Space junk (ice cream of some sort) approximately £4.50

I didn’t try this but I guess it’s what chocolate ice cream would be like.

Mango pudding, approximately £4.50

This seems to be the most commonly ordered item from a Chinese dessert menu. Sometimes they’re shaped like Hello Kitty (no, I’m not joking). If you’ve never had it before, it tastes like mango, and has the consistency of custard but slightly more solid.

Toffee banana, approximately £5

I’ve never had this before, but when my friend described it, we decided to order one portion to share among us. It’s deep fried banana covered in a crispy and chewy toffee with sesame seeds. The banana was hot and mushy because it had been deep fried, and when you bit into the crunchy toffee shell, it was such a nice combination that I wondered why I’d never had it before.

Overall, you can probably tell that I enjoyed the meal very much. The flavours, texture, good service and most of all good company we had was very enjoyable and made for a good time. Thing is, paying £30 per person is quite expensive by my standards.

Would I dine here again? I’m not sure if I could justify paying these prices for the food we had, so although the dinner was very enjoyable, I guess it’s one of those restaurants you’d only go to to say you’ve been there before.

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Pre-CNY gathering

A friend of mine kindly invited us to a party with about 15 or so other people on Saturday, sort of like a pre Chinese New Year party. As it was a pot-luck party, I brought along the closest thing I could find to a pot – a bucket of KFC, seen here in the picture.

Everyone else didn’t seem to have understood the concept of the pot thing.

(Joke)

This was the vegetarian curry, cooked by one of the guests. Obviously there are no prices listed on these dishes. It would have been slightly impolite (but probably expected) of me to have asked them how much their dish costs.

Siew yoke, or roast pork brought by another guest. As we arrived about an hour after the party, most of the food had gone cold, but this pork was still very crunchy despite being cold. The meat was flavoursome, and just salty enough for the taste to come through.

Green beans stir-fried in something. Again, didn’t do the whole interview thing with the chef, just kinda had a taste and tried to figure out what it was made with. I reckon something along the lines of yellow bean paste or similar.

Grilled pork marinated in spices, done by the host of the part. This was very flavoursome, and had been marinating for a while prior to cooking. Although it was slightly cold by the time I tasted it, it was still nice.

Curry chicken, again cooked by the host of the party. He said that he’d made this with a Malaysian curry spice powder, brand A1.

Grilled lamb (with some mint?) marinated in spices and once again, cooked by the host of the party. It does kind of seem as though he did most of the cooking.

Stir fried okra (ladies fingers) in sambal, prepared by a guest who’d somehow managed to get ready for the party, cook this dish x 2, and get to the party by train in slightly over an hour. I had lots of this, done really well in terms of texture, and the taste was authentic too.

Sweet and sour fish, prepared by surprise surprise, the host of the party. Perhaps this was not a pot luck after all and we misunderstood the invitation. This was one of my favourite dishes that day, the fish was very crunchy and the sauce was just nice to balance out the crunchiness of the fish.

Our contribution to the pot-luck party, this bucket of fried chicken. All in all, we had a great time, meeting people we’d never met before, and just having lots of food.

Saudara Chicken Rice (balls), Seremban, Malaysia

The observant among you might note that this blog is mainly about London restaurants. Seremban is not a new district in London (in case you’re worried about not keeping up to date with the latest edition of ‘New Districts in London’).

Introducing the new Guest Blogger to this blog, aptly named Guest Blogger (or Awesome as he is known to his friends). Contributing from Malaysia, he’ll be reviewing the well-known well-kept secret restaurants (they do exist) in Malaysia, and I’ll be basing the post on his information.

Where else better to start than with the Malaysian favourite – Chicken Rice. But before I go on, here is a short but interesting theory.

The Economist Big Mac Theory – Burgernomics

For those of you interested in the intriguing concept of the Retail Price Index, Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and FX rates, you’ll know that the Economist has this thing called the Big Mac index.

This theory basically starts off by saying that a Big Mac in one country should cost the same as a Big Mac in another country, when the currencies have been translated, otherwise one of the currencies is over/under-valued.

For example, if a Big Mac in the US costs US$3.60, and the current exchange rate is US$1.39/£, I’d expect to be paying £2.60 for the same Big Mac in the UK.

However, a Big Mac in the UK actually only costs £2.29 which means that the Sterling is currently undervalued (so true).

The Chicken Rice Theory – Chickenomics

Now, using a similar concept (though not quite), I used to have what I call the Chicken Rice Theory or Benchmark. This is where I compare the prices of food using the price of a portion of chicken rice as the base, and see if the item is worth its value or not.

For example, if a packet of chicken rice costs RM3 and a Subway sandwich costs RM21, the sandwich is a whopping 7 on the Chickenomics scale, making this a No-No expense.

Anything with a Chickenomics scale of 3 and below was considered worth-it, i.e. RM9 and below.

What does this have to do with this review???

Not much, but it’s about chicken rice, so I thought I’d put it in.

This is a shoplot front, which looks alot like other shoplot fronts of shops in Malaysia. Thus, the telling bit is the sign above the entrace which says:

Kedai (shop) Kopi (coffee) & (and) Makanan (food) Saudara (relative)

Shop Coffee and Food Relative actually translates to Saudara Coffeeshop and Restaurant (Saudara being the name and not the literal meaning).

This is what I love about Malaysian shops. You can just sit there for hours without being told you have to:

a) Book a table in advance
b) Order food, as drinks are not available without food
c) Tip (at 10% or preferably 12.5%)

This is the guy doing the cooking and pretty much everything else in the shop. Guest Blogger Awesome actually interviewed the guy, and found out that he’s called Mr Tan and that he’s been learning his skills in this trade from his father, who started the business in 1952.

According to Mr Tan, what he serves is Hainanese Chicken Rice, which is VERY different from Cantonese Chicken Rice. What is the difference, you ask.

Hainanese Chicken Rice is done in the no-frills style, as in the chicken is pretty much boiled in hot water, and taken straight out when cooked. None of that making it look pretty, or coating in flavoured oil business.

(At which point I guess the frills bit is the coating in flavoured oil business.)

Chicken rice balls with chicken (from RM3 to RM4)

Thus, the chicken is served as it comes, and because of that, it’s important that only the freshest chicken for this, preferably female as it has a sweeter and smoother tasting meat compared to the male chicken.

However, because there is no flavoured oil around the chicken, it dries up quicker and becomes smaller. Since the chicken is female, it is also smaller than the male chicken which means that on the whole, it’s more expensive the Hainanese way.

The other difference between the Hainanese and Cantonese version is that the Hainanese version of the rice comes in balls. Chewy rice condensed into a ball, making it even tastier and packed with yumminess.

And finally, how is it eaten? Dunked in lots and lots of chilli sauce, and soy sauce!

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London Chinatown in January

I took the tube to Chinatown last weekend just to see if the red lanterns were up. On the advertisement posters in the tube, some companies have already begun incorporating CNY elements on the adverts, and people are already talking about when to have their festive meals to avoid the Chinatown crowds.

As you come out of Leicester Square tube station, it seems like there aren’t that many lanterns put up after all.

And then you see this as you come to the Chinatown arch. Pigeons were flying all over the place, dodging lanterns like they were on a commando course.

Tourists had cameras, clicking away.

Interestingly enough, there aren’t many festive set menus being advertised on the restaurant windows. Unlike the set Christmas and New Year’s eve menus all over the place during December, but I guess it’s because most of the Chinese people dining in these restaurants don’t like to order from set menus?

I took this picture to show that there are ‘tai pai thong’ style stalls in Chinatown. Actually, this is the only one, so it’s quite a novelty. We bought the fried gyozas (8 for £2.50) and a pork bun (not quite a char siew pau, so not as nice) and nibbled on these before dinner. Quite a nice change to have some 'Chinese street food’ instead of having crisps and chips.

Along the same part of Chinatown, there are some stalls selling little, predominantly cute items (cute being a subjective thing here).

Just in case you don’t know where those underground looking stairs lead to.

Waiting for the tube, eating Chinese nibbles.

Some warm easy-going food in winter

When it’s –10 degrees and the heater just doesn’t want to play ball, the next best thing to warm you up is hot food. If you don’t have that, hot water helps too.

Here’s a dish I like to cook, in industrial-sized quantities. Why cook for 1 meal when you can cook for 5? Because no one wants to eat the same stuff 5 days straight, that’s why.

Tough.

I cooked 5 aubergines (eggplant, brinjal) with pork on Sunday, and was still eating it come Thursday. If I’d eaten reasonable portions instead of stuffing myself till the sofa was creaking, it would have gone on till Saturday of the next month.

To cook for 10 diners or more, here’s the recipe.

5 aubergines (about foot-long each, like a Subway sandwich)
2 packs of minced pork (500 grams each pack? Who knows)
Yellow bean paste (like black bean but not)
Oyster sauce, soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar, the typical seasoning ingredients

Method to the process:

1. Cut the aubergine into batons, and put them on kitchen towels to dry slightly. When all the aubergines have been cut, they’ll probably take up space in your kitchen and perhaps parts of the couch also.
2. Heat some oil in the frying pan, and fry the aubergine on medium heat until all the aubergine pieces are soft. This process takes a good while since you can’t put too much aubergine in at once, otherwise they just sit there as though they’re at a carnival, refusing to be cooked.
3. Put all the fried aubergine onto plates and couch if necessary.
4. Heat some more oil, and fry the minced pork until cooked. When that is cooked, add in the yellow bean paste (amount varies based on how much aubergine and pork there are) and stir till the pork is cooked. Add oyster sauce, fish sauce, soy sauce and sugar to taste). At this point, your kitchen might smell like a fish-dehydrating factory.
5. Put the aubergine back in the pan, and stir the mixture together, simmer for about 5 minutes on low heat until piping hot.

If this recipe doesn’t work out, and I don’t see why it won’t, resort to this.

Store-bought mozzarella Pizza Ristorante, with a pack of frozen pepperoni thrown on top. Looks almost as tasty as the Domino’s Meteor pizza here.

Kiwi and grapes if the pizza doesn’t work out either.

Carluccio's, 7-8 Market Place, Oxford Circus, London, W1W 8AG – A tale of salt and rubber bands cooked twice

If you want to eat a meal for half price, or perhaps eat 2 meals for the price of 1, London is where it’s at. All over London, printers are working full time printing out vouchers like they’ve never done before.

My collection of vouchers now need their own clear-binders and maybe even dividers to split them by category. The first thing I do, the moment after I sit down, even before I check out the salt and pepper shakers is wave the vouchers manically at the waiters, frightened by the prospect of having to pay full price if these aren’t presented upfront.

One of the places at which the frantic waving of vouchers was done was Carluccio’s restaurant (or Caffe as they insist on calling themselves) at 7-8 Market Place, Oxford Street with 7 other friends. The terms of the promotion said that a voucher was required for each couple sharing 2 meals, and a maximum of 3 vouchers was allowed per table. As there were 8 of us, 2 were promptly disassociated from the group.

(Anything for these discounts).

Joke, of course. We just told them that they had to order from the ‘meal deal’ menu without using the voucher.

The concept behind this chain of restaurants is that there is a deli-counter inside each restaurant. The little items sold (dips, truffle oil, pasta that kinda thing) are bargains if paying inflated prices for nice bottles is your kind of thing.

Where grocery shopping probably costs more than eating at the restaurant.

Chef must have had a salt shaker strapped on his forehead while dancing the Macarena that day, as almost every salt had dish in it (joke! joke!). The pun, I mean. The salt bit was entirely valid, as after the meal, I would have gladly consumed a goldfish bowl, goldfish and all if it had been near me. I was so dehydrated I felt like I had participated in the decathlon, drinking salt water along the way.

The dishes below have been ‘salt-rated’ for added detail.

Savoury bread tin £3.25 (Salt-rated 7/10)
Literally, a tin filled with bread that was salty, I mean, savoury. While the bread was good in texture, all fluffy, chewy and crispy (obviously not all at once, this applies to the different types of bread in the bread tin), they all had one common factor. No, not my teeth on them. They were all very salty.

Antipasto massimo! £9.95 (Salt-rated 3/10 – if you exclude the fact that the cured meats were already cured in salt. You gotta be slightly manic to add more salt to that.)

The question mark at the end of that was probably to denote how big this portion was. Ideally, it’s meant to be shared between 2. Realistically, you’d want to have this all to yourself. The different assortment of cured meat (thinly sliced and nicely chewy), ham, fresh mozzarella, bread and chutney could easily be taken as a main meal for one (or a snack if you’re one of those greedy ones).

Insalata mista £3.95 (Salt-rated 3/10)
This was part of the meal deal, where for £8.50 you got either a salad or the bread tin as the starter, any pasta (except the linguine which was not available) and coffee.

Calamari fritti £5.95 (Salt-rated 5/10)
I tried one ring, and found it to be chewy as squid should be but not crunchy (or crispy) as batter should be. There wasn’t much taste there aside from the taste of salt.

Gamberi alla marinara £6.95 (Salt-rated unsure as I didn’t try this)
This was sautéed prawns (if you consider 4 prawns as plural) with cherry tomatoes, garlic, white wine and herbs. With the dim lighting, we got all excited when we mistook the cherry tomatoes for prawns.

Spaghetti giardiniera £7.25 (Salt-rated 3/10) – originally penne on the menu
With pasta, you want it to be al dante. This portion of spaghetti with courgette and spinach balls had all the good stuff – the fresh courgette, the olive oil, chewy and crispy spinach balls, and green rubber band.

After finding 3 cm of green rubber band between his teeth, my friend took it out from his mouth and calmly put it at the side of his plate, almost as if he’d grown up eating bits of rubber band all this time. When asked, the waitress was most apologetic, rushing the plate away and promising a fresh new plate, complete with a deduction from the bill.

Second plate comes along, nearly all eaten, when the same friend takes out another bit of green rubber band from the spinach balls and puts it at the side of his plate again.

Too much of a good thing and all that, as they say.

Bistecca di bue con patate (steak to you and me) £13.95 (Salt-rated 12/10)
If this country ever had a shortage of salt, this dish would be one of the main causes for that. Chef was certainly shaking that salt shaker when he cooked this up, which was a shame because the texture of the meat was as nicely done as you could expect, and for about £7 (half price) the portion was reasonably decent.

When medium rare meant medium rare, and not crispy on the outside, crunchy on the inside. Ruined by the salt-shaker having a strop all over the steak.

Branzino con salsa e patate £11.75 (Salt-rated 7/10)
Fillet of sea-bass, pan-fried and served with potatoes and tomato salsa, generously salt-shaken again. To give this dish its full credit, the fish was fresh and nicely done, with the skin fried to a crispy finish without any over-powering fishy smell. The flesh of the fish was sweet, held its texture well even though it was eaten quite a while after being served (eating while taking pictures isn’t encouraged) and was nicely juicy. One of the better dishes of the meal.

My previous experience at another Carluccio’s (Brunswick Centre, Russell Square) was similar, minus the salt. The food on the whole is tasty, fresh and although slightly pricey without the discount, I’d still count it as one of the frequent eats on my list.

Would have been nice if some control was had over the salt-shaking, and perhaps if green rubber-band hadn’t been used as garnishing, my friends would have liked it more.

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