MIN JIANG: TOP OF THE HIGH STREET DIM SUM

As rules-of-thumb go the one that says that the quality of the food in a restaurant is in inverse proportion to its view is not a bad one. You can’t really moan – you, the diner and the restaurant are usually complicit in the unwritten agreement that the latter’s responsibility starts and ends by providing a fabulous vista.

This doesn’t apply so much in London where, to be honest the views, especially from elevated positions are, well, a bit crap – the city as a whole being a bit of a dog’s dinner architecturally.

It was a bit of a surprise then, that my Dim Sum lunch at Chinese restaurant Min Jiang, situated at the top of The Kensington Gardens Hotel, was so enjoyable. Certainly because of the food which I already knew about –
DH’s visit a year ago confirmed that this was a very capable kitchen – but the fact the view over Kensington Gardens was really rather pleasant. Lots of green stuff (trees I think), not too many cranes. That sort of stuff.

Min Jiang is, of course, well known for its Roast Duck, of which they sell an astonishing twenty plus per day but I was here to try their Dim Sum. I already knew about their excellent Xiao Long Bao, Shanghai Dumplings filled with a savoury stock, which had piqued my interest about their other “bits of the heart”.

I had my answer as soon as I started nibbling at a little bowl of lightly pickled vegetables. The veg had been marinated in vinegar together with a little salt and sugar. Simple, sure, but light and tart and delicious.

Everything is freshly prepared and cooked to order by the chef (from Hong Kong) and the results show – this is some of the best Dim Sum cooking in London. Ok, the range isn’t wildly inventive or particulary extensive but there is a preciseness to the preparation and a lightness to the end result which didn’t leave me feeling bloated and harbouring a MSG-induced migraine even after nine dishes.

For the steamed stuff Har Gau and Pumpkin Dumpling were little balls densely packed with seafood. The skin was delicate, if a little thick, but miles ahead of the usual industrial Gau. Xiao Long Bao were still present and correct with a good, scaldingly-hot stock and meaty filling.

Char Siu Puffs – pastry encasing a rich porky filling - were a revelation, all hot and crumbly. Cubes of squidgy Turnip Cake were made into a spicy stir fry. Greaseless Spring Rolls came tightly packed with shredded Beijing Duck with a thick dipping sauce. A special of silky smooth rolls of Cheung Fun were stuffed with nuggets BBQ’d Pork.

Yam Croquettes show the kitchen’s dab hand at frying. In more run-of-the-mill places these will spend most of their last hours sunning themselves in a warmer. Here, at Min Jiang, they’re brought fresh from the deep-fat fryer. Great stuff.

Does the Chinese Custard Tart have its origins in Britain (home of the tart) or Portugal (home of the Pastel de Nata) ? For me it’s of minor interest but the delicate little cakes served here were wolfed down pretty quickly.

Min Jiang’s prices are a bit higher than the norm but then so are their standards. And to make sure you appreciate each dish there’s plenty of plate swapping. Think of it as eating from a tasting menu rather than a er, bun fight where everything is served at once and you all dive in. It’s altogether a calmer and more civilised experience.

You may prefer the hustle and bustle and cheapness of a Chinatown joint or the more modern spin at the disco-like Hakkasan or even the buzzy Yauatcha where you pay for the staff to be snotty and superior to you. It’s probably a sign of age but I was more than happy at Min Jiang - it has great food, friendly staff and a nice view. I may have just discovered my perfect Dim Sum joint.

PRINCESS GARDEN: DIM SUM DOWTOWN

London has a Hell of a lot of restaurants, 10,000 + of them, I think, So, even with DH’s capacity for eating out, it would still be a pretty mean feat to exhaust all the possibilities.

However, in two areas of dining, we are beginning to run out of options. Fish & Chips is one, of course, as DH have eaten at most of London’s chippies worthy of note and many unworthy ones too. Also, places for a decent dumpling as our love of Sunday Dim Sum, particularly after an over indulgent Saturday night, has left us scratching our heads as we search for new places to go.

Princess Garden in Mayfair was the suggestion of one of HP’s colleagues who is originally from Hong Kong and we pitched up at Midday as per usual to find the place empty and the staff milling around with a bored look in their eyes. All this made the manager’s question as to whether we had a reservation seem a bit strange, that is until two minutes after we were shown to our table and a steady flow of seeming regulars trickled in until the whole place was heaving.

Dumpling prices came in at around £2.80 a time and our order for twelve assorted fried, steamed and baked barely raised the waiter’s eyebrow with only the additional order of half a roast duck making him give us a quizzical look. We like duck with our dim sum, so shoot us.

It was not a good start. Cold pork puffs and a “wild pork delight” did little to make us think this would be a worthwhile way to spend a Sunday lunchtime, but things soon began to pick up as the excellent steamed dumplings began to arrive. With enough of a misshape to confirm that they had not come out of a catering pack, each dumpling was piping hot with just the right amount of bite to the dough and filled with fresh, well flavoured ingredients where you could taste the main event. Har Gau and Sui Mai were both spot on, but it was simple scallop and asparagus dumplings and pea shoot dumpling which had us cutting the third portion with surgeon like precision so no one could be accused of eating more than the other.

Frying showed an excellent hand too, with both cuttlefish balls and taro croquettes opening to reveal a hot filling in a greaseless casing. The roast duck was as good as we have had in some time, excellent crispy skin covering a layer of fatty meat and then moist flesh. Not cheap at £15 for a half duck, but worth the prices and effort to reduce the bones to sawdust. Minus points however for the sauce of duck stock, which had been laced with MSG and had both of our hearts banging out African rhythms on the inside of our chests for the next few hours

However, it was the final dish that realy made us both take notice. Cheung Fun can often be nothing but cold sludgy dough with little of interest in side to make eating the slimy casing worthwhile. Here, the sauce served on the side, the dough was light and the filling, well-flavoured cuttlefish wrapped in a crisp egg pancake to give texture. So often this is the one dish to be left on the table, here it was cleared to the last piece.

Location and quality means that this is not a Chinatown cheap option and our bill including tea and service came to £63, but while it lacks the inventiveness of some of the newer arrivals in town, Princess Garden makes a useful alternative to Royal China and another interesting addition to the DH list when only Dim Sum will do.

Any other suggestions more than welcome

SHANGHAI: STALE DUMPLINGS IN DALSTON

There are certain words you will never hear either of DH say.

“Make mine a half”

“Well done, please”

“I’m catching up with my Jane Austen”

Most unlikely of all, however are those three special little words every one likes to hear across the dining table

“You have it”

It just doesn’t happen. In fact so determined are we to make sure that all things are fair and square when it comes to divvying up food, that I am pondering on buying HP a micrometer for Christmas to be used when portioning out the rashers of bacon atop the turkey.

So, when I heard these unlikely little words coming out of his mouth on Sunday’s excursion to Shanghai, a well-regarded Chinese restaurant in Dalston, I knew that all was not right with HP Dim Sum wise.

We had been before, a number of times, but not for some years. Our first visit saw us enjoying remarkably good, fresh and imaginative Dumplings which confirmed the reviews we had read claiming this was where many of London’s off duty Chinese chefs came to eat on their days off. A second visit was pretty dreadful and we never bothered again. Until yesterday, that is, when after reading some half decent recent reviews we made another trek up for an early pre-football lunch.

Little has changed. The room, a former pie & mash shop still looks great with all the old fittings and the same manager is still greeting people. Unfortunately, the food was more like our last visit than our first with little to distinguish the dishes we were served from the bog standard bought in versions of Chinatown.

There should be a prompt but definite progression to eating Dim Sum. First the baked, then the fried, then the steamed with the pre-requisite plates of roast duck and belly pork coming out whenever they damn well like. About five minutes after we ordered, our table was covered with nine of the thirteen dishes we has chosen, with the others following soon afterwards. Bamboo bowls stacked up and plates of cheung fun sat congealing nicely as we worked our way round to them. The treasury pork pies, always our first port of call, were stone cold, a bad sign when there is no one else in the place and the roast meats slid around in a slick of grease.

It was all pretty depressing stuff and the almost rank air of stale food and shoddy cooking confirmed our view that their low turnover meant we were experiencing the previous day’s leftovers brought back to life. Only the har gow and a plate of crab meat fried in noodles escaped the withering opinion of HP and when he uttered those three little words “you have it” about the last pork pie, I knew it was time to get the bill.

At £42 including service, it was cheap enough to last less in the memory than the nausea caused, for the remainder of the day, by the food in the stomach, but was still as big a robbery as The Arsenal’s snatch and grab we saw later on T.V.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, yes I did eat the last pork pie. Mainly because I am greedy, but also because I have no doubt it will be a cold day in Hell before I hear those words issue from the mouth of HP again.

YUM CHA: DIM SUM FOR THE ENGLISH

I was in the lift at work the other day. An Australian lass was chatting to her oppo, an English lass, about eating out.

“Anywhere around here to get decent Yum Cha ?”
“Yum Cha ?”
“Yeah – Yum Cha”
“What’s that ?”
“You know - Chinese food, like Dumplings”
“Oh, you mean Dim Sum”
“No, Yum Cha”
“I think you’ll find it’s called Dim Sum”
“No, I think you’ll find it’s called Yum Cha”
“No, you’re wrong, actually, it’s called…“ etc etc

Anyway, the situation escalated, talons were bared, clothes were ripped and there was a lot of jello to clean up afterwards. Once I’d cooled down a tad it got me wondering about the difference between the two phrases. The Brits go for Dim Sum, which is what you eat, but the Aussies go for Yum Cha, which is what you do. I consulted with my boss, who’s from Hong Kong, and he said Yum Cha is what they say over there. And you know what, he’s absolutely right. No doubt or debate about it. So I went for Dim Sum the other day to a place called Yum Cha and it confused the feck out of me.

Dim Sum, sorry, Yum Cha is situated on the stretch of Chalk Farm Road just before it becomes like an Hieronymus Bosch depiction of hell: that fire they had here earlier in the year – it went out far too soon. Anyway grim High Street aside my mood was much lightened by the fine weather. So fine, that even at midday the outside tables were already filled with people sucking on beers and smoking like it had just got banned or something.

Inside, the restaurant was pretty café like and functional with, very incongruously, Reggaeton thumping out of the sound system (A ella le gusta la gasolina indeed). A quick word with one of the helpful staff ruined it for all the kids but I’m sure their parents were silently applauding me (go on, you give ‘em what for).

The Dim Sum menu is a pretty bog-standard affair with all the usual suspects present and correct. But despite this, or maybe because of this, the execution wasn’t bad at all. I suspect most or all of the stuff is brought in – it has to be at these prices - but it’s all cooked to order and is a notch above Chinatown’s increasingly grotty norm.

This was most noticeable in the Baked Char Sui Puff which usually comes, cold, at the start of the meal. These ones came later into the meal and appeared to have been freshly baked and had a good flaky pastry. The Crystal Scallop Dumpling and the Dried Shrimp and Mushroom Cheung Fun were pretty good too.

Taro Croquette were a bit leaden and the tasteless Siew Long Bao gave up their precious cargo of stock as soon as they were lifted.

There weren’t any specials so I went for a couple of the more unusual dishes from the Cold section. Spicy Duck Tongue was in fact lots of duck tongues which were as promised, spicy. They were good and crunchy and oddly morerish. Japanese Baby Octopus were best described as, er, a texture thing. Tea was on the menu as Pu-Er but actually it was ok and although it cost a few quid there were unlimited refills. Like most DS meals it was over quickly but didn’t leave a bad taste in the mouth. And the prices are reasonable too.

I like making pointless analogies so here’s another one: Dim Sum joints as Premiership Football Teams. Assuming Hakkasan is Chelsea (the loathsome Yauatcha being Man Ure, naturally) and say Royal China is Portsmouth, then Yum Cha is probably a Wigan or a West Brom. Not likely to challenge for anything but probably going to stay up. The poor Chinatown examples are of course Newcastle or Tottenham (tee hee).

Post Script. The English girl won by the way. The Aussie girl was fit but she was giving far too much weight away.