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

Sedap, London, UK

I have been walking past Sedap several times on old street. From outside it is not an extremely attractive restaurant but I noticed that it was always very busy. After some research I found out that this Malaysian Chinese restaurant had very good reviews and decided to go and see by myself. 

I went for dinner with R. and we sampled a couple of their most famous dishes. To be honest, I had to restrain myself from ordering everything on the appetizing menu.

Penang Char Kway Teow :  stir-fried flat rice noodles with prawn, beansprout, sausage, egg, fish cake, soy sauce, chive and chili paste

These fried noodles were very tasty and had a nice sticky texture. Probably thanks to the large amount of oil used to fry them. But there is no fat-free lunch: apart from some rare exceptions the fatter/sweeter the better.

Transparent beef rolls

The beef wrapped in rice paper was a nice change from the traditional spring/summer rolls with shrimps. It was not very easy to eat though.

Seafood crab

The crab stuffed with seafod was sweet and rich.

Tow Yu Bak: tender pork stewed for hours in a sweet thick soya sauce

This pork dish was similar to my mum's braised pork belly in soy sauce and five spices. Very tasty again and very oily too. Anyway, Malaysian food IS oily.

Sambal okra

Okra or "lady finger" is a funny vegetable. It looks vaguely like a zucchini, but the main feature of okra is its slimy texture, which may not be pleasant for everyone. It was cooked with a fragant and hot sambal (chili paste).

I went another time to Sedap for lunch with L. and we ordered two "classics": Nasi Lemak and Hainanese chicken rice.

Nasi Lemak

Nasi Lemak is Malaysia national dish and is usually eaten there for breakfast. It usually comes as a platter with rice, meat or fish, a hard-boiled egg, peanuts, cucumber and sambal.

Hainanese Chicken Rice

Even if the Hainanese Chicken Rice may look bland on the picture, it had a very good taste. I tried once to make chicken rice with a chicken rice paste bought in an Asian supermarket but it came no where as good as Sedap's chicken rice.

Despite the richness of some of the dishes, I really enjoyed eating at Sedap. I think the best is to go there with some friends and order plenty of dishes to share, to taste the versality of Sedap's Malaysian Chinese cuisine.

Cost: £6-£8 per dish

Man Wah, Hong Kong, China

Man Wah is on the 25th floor of the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong. A friend of mine took me there to try their Peking duck. We waited for our table at the bar of the hotel with great cocktails.

As an appetizer: deep-fried tiny fishes with peanuts (or soy beans?) Such lovely eyes!

For those who might wonder, the thing below is not a pig or a dog but a duck, or to be precise, half a duck. The proper way to eat a Peking roast duck is to eat it in three ways, as it is served at Quanjude. First, the crispy skin is dipped in sugar and garlic sauce, then the meat is eaten with spring onions, cucumber and hoisin sauce in thin pancakes, then the remaining meat and bones are boiled and served in a rich broth. Man Wah is taking some liberties with tradition and we had the duck served in two different ways: first the skin was rolled in the pancakes, and then the meat was stir-fried with celeriac. The waiter showed his skills by preparing the skin pancakes with only a fork and a spoon. Bravo!

Half Peking duck

Tradition or not, that was good. And with the green beans and fried rice we had ordered as sides we had way  too much to eat. Lucky us, in Hong Kong, we can have Mandarin Oriental doggy bags!

Flower jelly and puff pastry

Cost: I don't remember.

Tim Ho Wan, Hong Kong, China

This is the dining room of a Michelin-starred restaurant. Evidence below:

Tim Ho Wan is one of the cheapest Michelin-starred restaurants in the world and can be found in Kowloon,  Hong Kong. I have always thought that Michelin stars rewarded surroundings and service quality as much as food, but once I arrived at Tim Ho Wan I knew I was wrong. Even from outside I could tell that there was no fabric tablecloth and the barking lady at the entrance was no Maitre d'. And indeed, after some research I found out that Michelin stars are supposed to judge only food, the five criteria being: the quality of ingredients, the skill in their preparation and the combination of flavours, the level of creativity, the value for money, the consistency of culinary standards.

Tim Ho Wan has a limited number of seats and closes at 10pm and there is no arguing with the Cantonese Cerberus. We arrived at 9.30pm and there were more than twenty people waiting outside with their yellow papers. As the lady at the entrance was shouting "No more! Last order!" I was struck by panic I was envisioning myself leaving Hong Kong (it was my last day there) without trying the starred dim sum. Fortunately for us, one family not understanding what was going on (tourists) thought the restaurant was closing and left. I jumped on their yellow paper and after some begging, managed to get us in.

As Tim Ho Wan has no time to waste, guests are required to grab a yellow paper while queuing and tick the dishes they want to order. To avoid any regrets, just order everything, which we almost did as we had literally thirty seconds to chose.

Beef and shrimp rice noodle rolls

Steamed lettuce (Yes!)

Steamed glutinous rice in Chiu Chow style

Steamed shrimp dumplings

Pan-fried pork dumpling

Mushroom and beef spring rolls

Pork dumpling

Baked bun with BBQ pork

Flower jelly

I have been told that the house dish is the baked bun with BBQ pork. I had never seen this kind of bun before, and that is true that the combination of melting pork with the crispy and tender bun is to kill for. We had also tomato and beef dumplings, which were quite original. All dim sums were very nice, but I would not say that my meal at Tim Ho Wan was a life-changing experience or that I found these dim sum ten times better than average. However Tim Ho Wan certainly qualify for Michelin's value for money criteria, as the bill came at HKD 240 for three (£19).

Yam'Tcha, Paris, France

I was quite happy to secure a table for lunch at Yam'Tcha, since I had been longing to go and eat at this small French/Chinese eatery for one year. Yam'Tcha was, along with Passage 53, on my to-eat-in-Paris list, and my patience was seriously tested as I could find every other day a new article on the fine cooking of Adeline Grattard.

Therefore, on a sunny Sunday, we adventured in the Halles area towards rue Sauval to discover this culinary temple.

Yamtcha is a charming place, and the best table to book is probably the one on the bar counter where two lucky diners can literally eat in the semi-open kitchen.

Surprisingly there was no A la Carte menu, or maybe we had to specifically ask for it? We went anyway for the surprise 6-course tasting menu and ordered the pairing teas, meticulously prepared by Adeline Grattard's Chinese husband Chiwah Chan.

Sweet potato noodles and crunchy vegetables

Flat beans salad with ventrèche

 

Prawn wontons

 Steamed mackerel with black rice and girolles

 Roasted Challans duck and sautéed aubergines 

with Sichuan pepper and coriander

 

 A little bit of tea to wash down the food...(I obviously do not

remember the names of the six different teas)

Gorgonzola cheese with soy sauce and honey

 More tea to get ready for dessert

 

 Raspberry and white peach pavlova with ginger ice cream

Contrary to what I had read, the service at Yam'Tcha was not that slow, even if the tea serving was not always perfectly timed.

We liked every dish, with a special mention going to the roasted duck with sautéed aubergines which were  nicely peppery and melting in the mouth. The sweet potato noodles appetizer and the flat beans salad were reminiscent of the local Chinese flavours. I was slightly disappointed by the wontons as I prefer them with less filling. The mackerel was light and perfectly cooked, but we were not excited by the black rice it was served with. 

When we were served with a simple piece of Gorgonzola, we were not enthusiastic at first, but we must admit that the combination with honey and soy sauce is excellent. And to finish, the dessert was brillant: a deconstructed pavlova, made of a crispy and melting light meringue, served with fragrant white peaches and a delicious ginger ice-cream.

Yam'Tcha is clearly at the top end of the Chinese food offer in Paris (which is rather poor) but I would not say the food was mind-blowing. Apart from the Chinese/French "fusion" twist, the cooking was not particularly innovative. But maybe Adeline Grattard is not seeking originality but simply wants to offer to the Parisian dining scene some very well-done Chinese food, in which she indeed excels.

Cost: 6-course tasting menu: 65 EUR

Pairing teas and/or wines: 20-40 EUR