Off The Blog 3 - Chinese Restaurant Special

Here's an Off The Blog special featuring three Chinese restaurants that showcase three different regional cuisines, Sichuan, Taiwanese, and Cantonese.

As regular readers will know, one of my favourite restaurants is Chilli Cool but before they opened, I used to be a regular at Snazz Sichuan on Chalton St (near Euston station). Alas, Snazz Sichuan is no more and it has been taken over by the Red 'N' Hot mini-chain. I've previously reviewed their Chinatown restaurant, where I uncovered their racial profiling policy, which they also have in operation at this branch.

The Randomness peeps organised this outing and Bellaphon also joined us. Their more detailed reviews can be found here and here - Bellaphon's review has a video of the meal ! We ordered a wide selection of food including benchmark dishes such as dan dan noodles (£5.60), shui zhu niu rou or hot and numbing beef (£8.80), and la zi ji or special fried chicken w/chilli and cumin (£12). Of these the chicken was my fave, possibly on a par with Chilli Cool's version. However the dish of the evening was in my opinion, the offal-ly good fire-exploded kidney flowers (£7.80).

The bill including drinks and service came to a reasonable £25/head. I felt a bit bad eating here, as it felt like I was cheating on Chilli Cool. I still prefer the 'Cool but I would happily come here if I wanted to eat Sichuan food in a more elegant setting. By the way, I think this branch is better than the one in Chinatown.



Leong's Legends is an oft-blogged restaurant but one I had never visited until a month ago. There are now three branches of this Taiwanese chain, and Mr Wine and I went to Leong's Legends Continues on Lisle St, as there was a queue at the original branch.

For starters, we went with the signature dish of pork & crab siu loung bao (£6) or xiao long bao, as they are known in Mandarin. These soup filled dumplings were good but not as good as I was led to believe. It was hard to discern any crabmeat and the 'pinch' at the top was too doughy. Part of the problem is that I've eaten top-notch xiao long bao in Shanghai and the versions back home compare unfavourably.

Our other starter was the Taiwan mini-kebab with pork (£2 each). I liked the belly pork in this but with hindsight, eating a sandwich each before our mains was a bit much. It was too filling and it spoiled our appetite for the rest of the meal.

Onto the mains and we found ourselves playing that old game of 'Chinese-menu Russian Roulette', in which the dishes you order are either excellent or crap. In the latter category was the sea bass fillets in sha cha sauce (£9.50), which came in a gloopy sauce that wasn't made with sha cha sauce as I know it. The aubergine with mashed garlic and tao pan sauce (£5) was our old friend, fish fragrant aubergine according to its Chinese name. This was also disappointing as it was unevenly seasoned in that it was either very spicy or not spicy at all.

Thank god that the chicken with rice wine, soy sauce, and sesame oil (£7.80) saved the day. This famous Taiwanese dish is called san bei ji or three cup chicken in Chinese as it is made with a cup each of rice wine, soy, and sesame oil. The resultant sauce was divine and was further enhanced by the aniseedy notes of the Thai basil. Mr Wine remarked that mashed potatoes would go down a storm with this sauce.

Together with rice, a bottle of Aussie Foundstone Chardonnay (Mr Wine went with my choice!) and a tip, we paid £30/head. I liked the ambience on the top floor and you could imagine that you were in a medieval Chinese inn. I also thought the service was excellent although I'm never sure whether being able to speak Chinese makes a difference.

On the last couple of occasions, my folks have been in London, they've eaten dim sum at Phoenix Palace and Pearl Liang. They liked the food but they didn't like the fact that there wasn't a Chinese supermarket nearby. The thing is, my parents are typical Chinese of their generation and like to go to food shopping after a dim sum feast.

So between the Noodles' siblings, we were tasked with finding a decent dim sum restaurant in Chinatown, easier said than done. We chose Golden Harvest – coincidentally owned by the same group that operates Leong's Legends and the Empress of Sichuan – on Gerrard St. It was nicely decorated and comfortably accommodated our family group of all ages.

Sadly that's as good as it got and I won't bore you with too many details of the actual dim sum, as it was very mediocre. My favourites of har gau (prawn dumplings) and mak yu beng (cuttlefish cakes) were poorly done. There was some good stuff like the wor tip (grilled pork dumplings) and portion size was very generous but otherwise, it was largely forgettable.

With some sides of noodles and siu yuk (crispy belly pork), the bill clocked in at £15/head. You could say it was good value but I'd rather pay an extra fiver for higher quality dim sum.

{Update Oct 10 - Golden Harvest is now closed and it has re-opened as Dumplings Legends. This restaurant specialises in Shanghai-style xiao long bao and also serves a small selection of other dim sum at lunchtime as well as a pan-Chinese main menu. I've yet to visit but it's on my list.}