Royal China Club

I love Chinese small eats and when I am in China I can't help myself stopping at each shop or food cart to try new stuff. My favourites small eats are zongzi and xiao long bao but I have never found good enough versions of any of these in London or Paris. Many dim sum eateries in London offer xiao long bao but they are no match to the ones I used to have when I was a child. I remember my cousin's husband waking up early in the morning and cycling to the best xiao long bao shop in Suzhou to get me some for breakfast. That was a good time. Who would do that for me today? Certainly not R., for whom the only valid reason to get up earlier in the morning is to make a Fantasy Football transfer. 

I like also all sorts of dim sum, and these can be easily found in London. For a noisy experience you can go to one of the many Chinese restaurants in Chinatown. But if you want to have dim sum in a more refined environment, Royal China Club in Baker street is a good choice. I went there with L. and N. and we had a good "pétage de bide" session. I had been to Royal China previously with L. and Royal China Club is one notch above its sister restaurant, in terms of service and food quality.

I don't remember the name of every dim sum but they were all very good.  I had never had seafood xiao long bao before and I prefer when the filing is made with pork mince. We particularly enjoyed the chives dumplings, the spinach dumplings, the sticky rice, the rice noodle rolls and the mango and sticky rice pudding. Overall it was a very nice dim sum brunch, that we washed down with plenty of jasmine tea.

Char siu bao

Chives dumplings

Seafood xiao long bao

Chinese broccoli

Deep-fried soft shell crab

Beijing style fried jiao zi

Sticky rice

Cheong fun /rice noodle rolls

Baked puff rolls

Spinach and shrimp dumplings

Boiled dumplings in a hot sauce

Mango pudding and black sticky rice

The pricing was strange. A basket of 3 dumplings was £3-£5 but one sticky rice was £8. The plate of Chinese broccoli came also at a surpringly high price of £9.

Cost: 33£ pp with tea and sparkling water