Ah …Easter weekend. We drove all the way to the Sidmouth coast, to marvel at the bronze cliffs, seagulls and took in other bits of Devon (like Beer) while we were there too. Aside from M.Caines’ iron grip on Exeter dining (We did eat at his restaurant at ABode Exeter, but not worthy of a write-up imho) , we were on the look out for something decidedly local.

I couldn’t secure a last minute booking at La Petite Maison nor did we try a Rick Stein chippy, but instead we made time for this well-regarded humble fish & chip shop located on premises at Darts Farm in Topsham.

Curiously the farm is a set of modern looking buildings which hosts an Cotswold outdoors shop as well as an AGA outlet. It certainly looks more like the facade of a leisure centre than a traditional farm. Started initially by Roland Dart 40 odd years ago as a small hut selling produce to the locals, it’s now morphed into a major food hub in Devon.

I suppose if Wholefoods were to expand their influence, Darts Farm would be the ideal candidate to mount a take-over. Inside, the main shop floor sells local produce, a local (award-winning) butcher and a cider & ale corner. I do regret not picking up a bottle of aged cider brandy!

The Fish Shed is very modest, literally run from a shed extended out from the main shop building. There’s an al fresco area, but there were also tables right inside the food shop looking out to the shed.

The owner is Dave Kerley, a one-time scallop diver and so has insight into securing the best available fish for his chippy. They claim to only ever cook fish which is caught & landed from nearby Lyme bay on the same day (or within 12 hours) , ensuring freshness and quality.

Naturally his daily prepped beer batter (finished in a fryer filled with beef dripping) has been lauded and ultimately led to whispers as one of the best fish & chip shops in the country. In addition to the greasy option, all fish can be served grilled.

On the day we visited, the option for lobster & chips wasn’t available (perhaps Devon Lobsters weren’t yet in season), but there was a pretty wide range of fish available including cod, brill, haddock, monkfish, lemon sole and john dory.

Fish cakes and sausage (with chips) was also on the menu, but we avoided. Everything came served in sturdy take away boxes labelled “The Great British Take Away”. Nice.

Beer Battered Cod (£7.15) , chips (£2.75) & mushy peas (£0.80).

The bubbling and crispy golden batter was very light and immediately appealing. Already well-seasoned so only the lightest dabble of salt was necessary. The batter certainly tasted quality (and clean) , not overly greasy and on the lighter side.

The fish was tremendously moist and flaky, it certainly was eye-openingly fresh! I’m no fisherman, so have no idea about the likelihood of cod caught off Devon (maybe deeper seas?). But whatever the case, 3 out of 4 of us had the battered cod and we were all cooing with delight. Certainly one of the best fried fish to my tastes.

The other half decided against deep fried fish, and opted for her John Dory to be grilled. We also noted the supple freshness of the fish. Incredible stuff.

Chips were thick cut, fluffy and golden. They were alright. Mushy peas were a bit of a let down I thought, a little deflated and dry.

Scallops, £7.70.

Devon scallops are tiny …but god were these good! Not over-grilled, and just perfection! Really fresh, and amazingly sweet. Could have had two more boxes of them.

I don’t want to turn this into an opera, but I did really like The Fish Shed. Regret not making a return visit the next day. London restaurants blog posts may saturate the internet these days, but it’s slim pickings when it comes to finding decent places outside of the M25.

Anyway, if you’re headed to Exeter anytime soon, I think it’s worth dropping by Darts Farm for lunch. I’m not a chippy expert but I will say that for me personally, the visit to the Fish Shed was certainly worth the 3 hour drive.

The Gist of It

The Fish Shed
Fish & Chips £15pp.
Darts Farm, Topsham, Exeter EX3 0QH
Tel : 01392 878200

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Rain washes down the windscreen. The cloudy, darkened skies forcing the afternoon traffic to dance the immobile jiggle of halogen lamps. As we inched closer toward Mong Kok, I piped up and said to the taxi driver : “You can stop here …I think”. He threw a disconcerting gaze into the rear view mirror. Holding his stare, he acknowledged my naive tourist sense of direction with the slightest of nods. The silence was palpable. His cold, dead pan demeanor indicated an explosive character only simmering underneath. The traffic eases ahead, he engages the first gear, and off the car pounces toward the curb. Above us in great neon heavens read “Pho”. And other chinese characters.

“$24″ He said. Rather curiously, taxi doors in Hong Kong are equipped with self-opening hydraulic mechanisms which (we gather) are controlled by an eject button near the driver. We were now in Mong Kok. Every other shop sold either bicycles or air-operated BB guns or both. Streets were named after vegetables and it is this part of HK which holds the not so coveted reputation as the world’s most densely populated area of land. Talk about the atmosphere, this IS the HK Cinema-look, from the Young & Dangerous franchise to WKW’s only surrender to linear storytelling in As Tears go by. I savoured it as a life experience and really it was only fitting that we were to find one of the more unique Michelin restaurants in the world.

Restaurant may not be the right category to pigeonhole Tim Ho Wan (translating directly as Add Good Luck), considering it really is more of a cafe that serves all day dim sum. Given its rather modest setting, it’s a surprise to find it actually has a Michelin star, and by that regard, probably also the cheapest Michelin restaurant in the world. Perhaps because of this novelty it makes it more of a tourist attraction than most of its peers in the same club. However, few actually entertain 40 minute queues at 4 in the afternoon.

My dad and my better half were with me for this one and we decided put our names down for a ticket to join the queue and stood around for a few minutes. We decided on a stroll around the neighbourhood to take in more of the dense ambiance, but really we were just starving as we hadn’t eaten since 10am. So we set out to find some piping hot egg tarts in the area…

…and that’s when we stumbled into this shop just refilling their stock with fresh tarts straight from the oven.

$2.5 Hong Kong dollars is roughly 20p, say 30p each, but oh my stars and squirrels, these were fantastic. True to the former colony’s reputation which mightily conquered the egg tart, it tasted like the best I’d ever had. Warm, yolky, creamy, rich rock sugariness sweetness. No tart in Blightly is quite as delicious as this. OK, maybe The Sportsman.

Meandering our way back to Tim Ho Wan, half an hour later, we noticed the queue had elongated, but thankfully we were just in time to have our number called. That was five o’clock, making it a 45 minute wait.

They really weren’t kidding when they said you’d rub shoulders with neighbouring diners, it really was an overly small footprint to squeeze 14 or so tables (30 or so humans) into. Tables didn’t have millimeter s between them, they had zero space. For the tables positioned against the walls, waiters had to pull the table out to insert the inside person and push the table back in to lock in the diner. Mongkok may be the most densely populated region in the world, but one cannot help but see the irony in this translating inside the restaurant. We didn’t just rub shoulders, we were rubbing elbows, and knees, occasionally knocking heads, and I was certain I could detect body odour emanating from the stranger beside me.

Ah but in a sense, this felt like exactly what the tourist in me was looking for – a sense of truly slummin’ it with the locals, I relished the grittiness of this experience.

The menu was very short even for a dim sum place, with about 25 items in total. A blue one in English and yellow (hmm) in Chinese. Tick what you want fancy, each dish was about £1.20, the priciest was around £2.

Baked Char Siu bun, HKD$15 (£1.25)

We started with their signature char siu buns, which is nothing more than ‘bo lo bao’ (a kind of sugar crusted Chinese ‘brioche’ bun shaped like the skin of a pineapple) stuffed with char siu. As you can probably tell, the exterior was crispy, but underneath it was pillow-soft and deliciously greasy. Almost like sugared and buttered toast stuffed with honeyed bbq pork. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, because I did, but you know that food snob in me thought it was a little bit of a cop-out for a supposedly dim sum specialist to shun the classic steamed char siu bun. Which in itself takes tremendous skill in getting the classic fluffy, cotton-candy consistency of the bun.

Steamed creamy custard bun, HKD$12 (£1)

The steamed bun did eventually make a cameo but with custard instead of pork. It was evident that while the effort was not bad, it certainly did not even come close to the fluffy cotton candy perfection I thought it may do.

Congee with pork, salted egg and preserved century egg, HKD$14 (£1.17)

Good juk. Piping hot (as it should be), had great creamy, blobby consistency, well-seasoned. Nothing overly spectacular however, not better than the CCTs around HK I think, but still it was nostalgic.

Prawn Cheung Fun … ‘Stuffed vermecelli roll’ , HDK$19 (£1.60)

Yeah these were textbook. Chewy bouncy rice roll, fleshy shrimp and a schweet soya sauce.

Pan-fried turnip cake, HKD$12 (£1)

These were really great. Sizzling, starchy and rooty.

Steamed vegetable dumpling with mushroom HKD$14 (£1.17)

These were criminally bad. Too bland and flavourless. It felt as if the kitchen were dissin’ vegetarian dishes. Major fail.

Steamed egg cake, HDK$12 (£1)

…. nothing to say really, I was bored by the time we got to the Chinese Chifon. Like the rest of the meal, I thought this was good, but certainly not great.

Steamed beef ball with beancurd skin, HKD$14 (£1.17)

Chinese meatballs, sesame oil and soya sauce in the place of pomodoro. Meh.

Hargao, 4 for HKD$22 (£1.83)

Before you can say ’3 for life, 4 for death’, that superstition is rubbished here – they serve 4 in Hong Kong see, and it’s 4 for value for money. Right then, this must be the acid test and my verdict is…

…it wasn’t better than Princess Gardens (in London), in fact it was distinctly ordinary.

Shumai, 4 for HKD$22 (£1.83)

On the other hand, we thought the bland-looking shuimai were delicious and the only dumplings which showed pedigree. Rich pork and rich mushroom flavours fighting against the buttery flavours of pork fat with every bouncy chew. Artery-busting. Applaud.

Steamed spareribs in blackbean sauce, HKD$14 (£1.17)

Oily, piping hot, fatty and a highly addictive way to end a meal sucking on bones. Good spare ribs.

We also had their much publicized medlar cakes (same as Lung King Heen) and another extra delish plate of charsiu cheung fun. All in all, it set us back HKD$221. That’s £18.4 for three or just about £7 per person. Tea was probably free. Considering we ordered half the menu, this was definitely the cheapest michelin starred restaurant in the world.

As we finished, I asked my dad if he thought the meal was ‘excitable’. Firstly, he said I was a shitty blogger who had hyped up too many disappointing meals for him, and then he followed by saying that it can’t be exciting when it’s such a torturous eating environment.

Hah.

The day before we were at Super star restaurant and I had this gem of a shumai, which I thought was brilliant:

Don’t beat me up for being old fashioned, but I havent been back in 15 years, and the sight of this baby abalone topped shumai, was to me, a kind of dim sum heaven. Chow Yun Fatt used to eat at this restaurant, his photographs hanging by the entrance.

In truth we thought the quality of the food was pretty good, but the same could be said of most dim sum in Hong Kong. Of course, the issue is with expectation, that because of the macaroon, we had expected Tim Ho Wan to better its competition. Sadly it didn’t. It’s probably rated because it is cheap, but definitely not the other way round. It was certainly not worth queuing up for.

Maybe at some point in its history, it once deserved its reputation as a dim sum specialist, but in 2012, it looks like they have sacrificed quality to take a bigger slice of the pie. This ‘michelin restaurant’ has expanded with two branches carrying the same name and looking dangerously like it is franchising to capitalise on its aforementioned vaunted reputation. Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with restauranteurs wanting to expand their business, but as the gastro-tourist, I can’t help but feel the mystique dilution when visiting this modest star winning dim sum cafe in a neglected corner of Mong Kok. Word of mouth can be a powerful missionary for great restaurants, but it can easily become its nemesis too. I note that Chef Mak is ex-Lung King Heen (the only 3 starred Chinese restaurant on planet earth) and do wonder why the HK red guide is so fascinated with the talent (both past and present) at the Four Seasons Kitchens.

If you think you’re gonna get the dim sum moment of your life after a painful (because you’re likely to be hungry) queue, then you might be a little disappointing.

What you save on the bill doesn’t really justify the wait and the eating conditions. You’ll have to be quite careful with the soya sauce spillage, cheung fun can be slippery business after all.

But it is ridiculously cheap and for that alone, it probably deserves its accolade. But the next time I am in Mong Kok, I know I won’t be trying to get into Tim Ho Wan, I would be stuffing as many egg tarts as I can from a few doors down instead.

The Gist

Tim Ho Wan
2-8 Kwong Wah St, Mong Kok, Hong Kong.
10am-10pm
MTR : Mong Kok

Links

Tansuann , CNNgo , Mark Wu , Half Eaten , Hand picked by Ron and Chris , Telegraph

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To kick off the new lunar year, we travel to the hidden path within the mountains of Xizhi, Taipei. Where gravity defying monks tend to visiting tourists in between meditations and wu-gung practice. This is not merely a restaurant review. This is retelling of the legend know as …Shi Yang Culture Restaurant.

(warning, an overly long prologue below. Scroll to middle-ish to skip to food)

Whuppa. No seriously, we had to drive up a mountain to get here, here being Taipei. It was one of the more illuminating meals I’ve had, a kind of a mountain-top cuisine in zen-like surroundings. Take a look at the outside:

Talk about restaurants with a view. Forget about those which oversee some of the worlds greatest city harbours, or the world’s greatest city parks, or even those which will overlook our beloved Ol’ Smoke. A birds eye view on human progress may be breathtaking but it is also a reminder of the way man has levelled and desecrated mother nature with our heretical obsession in forcing our electrical wizardry upon the world.

In Shi Yang, it couldn’t be further away from the modernity of life as we know it. Here you eat under the motherly gaze of nature’s original skyscrapers. Surrounded by these hulking mountains with puffs of clouds brushing by its summits as they whiff past – It is humbling.

The restaurant looks like it was built by hand, with steel beams holding up solid timber planks, all painted black. It’s inspired by real ancient China. Song Dynasty, 10th century China. So wonderfully organic, humanistic, much harmony. As if the 21st century had forgotten to touch this part of the world, or more accurately, as if this place had deliberately stayed away from the march of technology. Ironic considering Taiwan’s economic awakening was built on the silicon boom. The restaurant is essentially made up of conjoining private quarters, there is no communal area, and each table is located in its own private room. As we made our way into our allocated room, I peeked into the others, and saw that they were filled predominantly by large groups of tourists from the Mainland, armed with their cameras hovering over the food.

The cobbled narrow walkway lit by bamboo lamp shades and flickering candles on the ground was cinematic. We took our shoes before entering, and sat down at a low long table, made of cold steel allowed to age to a natural rust, and held up by solid wooden legs. Sturdy, permanent and long lasting – a feeling in total contrast to my hectic, vacuous and fast paced world. For background music, chinese mandolins sent every mitochondria in my cells into a resonant sway.

The Force I feel, is strong with this restaurant. I feel at peace with myself, I feel I could move the mountains I was communing with. I felt hugely replenished. A large pot of extinguished charcoal letting out residual heat kept us warm. Only the sight of a kettle attached to an electrical socket, prevented me from glimpsing into the parallel brane universe.

The Taiwanese think of this restaurant’s cuisine as ‘creative and traditional’. But maybe it’s much more than that, but perhaps also very much less. You could say it’s a minimalist kind of high mountain food, leaner and far removed from the rest of the world below. There is so much clarity, it’s analogous to a spiritual stripping away of the burden of materialistic life, a rebirth to a purer version of self.

Or you could say this cuisine is a direct reflection of Taiwan’s mixed heritage. The island nation of flaming mountains, valleys of terrible beauty and a people who identify with sweet potato. It is a sort of cultural melting pot where the best of the Chinese and Japanese is found. From its original influx of Chinese migrants from the Fujian province to its eventual legacy rule of law left over after centuries of association with its (former) Japanese imperial master. For the foreigner (that’s me) whose had the fortunate pleasure of learning about Taiwanese culture first hand through my better half, it really strikes me as one of the most uniquely distinct cuisines/cultures in the world. It is both Chinese and Japanese, but neither at the very same time.

The man behind Shi Yang is a rather elusive character, which I think translates loosely to ‘Nourishing Eating Culture retreat, on a Mountain’. The restaurant has moved from mountain to mountain in its roughly 16 year history, from its original Xindian City location, to Yang Ming Mountain and eventually to Xizhi. The owner is Lin Pin-Hui, a former architect; The story goes that he packed in his successful city career to move to the mountains to lead a more spiritual life and to indulge in his true life passion of building a space to appreciate Chinese Tea.

Occasionally, he would entertain his buddies by cooking this purified lifestyle food, eventually it became a kind of underground restaurant. On those foundations, it grew to become a sort of transcendent purveyor of modern Taiwanese cooking and a tea house, famous not so much in guide books, but more so by word of mouth. I suppose the story is paralleled by Stephen Harris and The Sportmans in Britain. Move closer to nature, cook what you find around you, live a more enriched lifestyle. Yeah I’d like to do that once I’m done writing for you folks.

There is a more romantic report of his origins, his kitchen ethics (Culinary ‘partners’ as opposed to sous chefs) here.

No menus, the food is completely seasonal, and think of it as a vegetarian based (think monks’ food again) with the odd injection of the freshest seafood delivered from Keelung harbour, and some pork and chicken thrown in. Yeah that’s right, local provenance, no imported truffle or foie gras here. Tick, tick, tick.

The menu-less menu costs NTD1100 per person. NT what? That works out to be £26 each. That’s INCLUSIVE of service. And that’s for 9 to 10 courses, irrespective of lunch or dins. Yeah I hear you, £26 is actually cheap(ish) in Taipei terms too, but really it’s amazing how affordable it really is. I went with the family, 6 adults and two 3 year olds. Everybody eats the same thing, that’s to say, every item was times 6 (kids picked off their parents).

Ok, ok no more hot air, food below.

Course 1 : Vegetable soup with flying fish roe

Almost veloute like in texture, a root vegetable with rich umami flavours, perhaps akin to celeriac. I was completely sold on the first sip. The fish roe adding extra textural layers. We also drank this with a herbal tea, you know, I forgot to write it down, but it was medicinal, like a sort of strong ginger tea.. or something. Detoxing, different, cleansing.

Course 2: (L-R) Mochi with flying fish roe ; Pomegranate with wood ear ; Peanut tofu with olive tapenade.

This trio was like a kind of appetizer, uniquely and quite strangely cleansing.

There was a sequence in which I had to eat this in, but I forget the order.

My notes indicate that I started from the middle with the cold pomegranate juice with wood ear. A jolt to the soul. Then I moved on to the crisply fried and gooey mochi with a centre filled with a flying fish roe paste. I remember the crunch of the mochi, and thought how peaceful the cooking was. Did they use some kind of clean vegetable oil as opposed to lard?

Finally, I moved on to the peanut tofu. Great wobbly pannacotta textures, also served cold, it was fabulously dense and silken, as good as the best and freshest tofu I’d ever had in Asia, but with the surprise of peanut as opposed to that of pure water. Paired with perfectly boiled rectagular blocks of squid, an olive tapenade for flavour and some sort of mucus-like seeds – this was immensely brilliant cooking. I could honestly say I’d never had anything like this before. Seriously, this would change your mind about what tofu could taste like.

Course 3: Chawanmushi or “Chawan Steam” with scallop.

Or steamed egg in a tea cup. I was amazed at how the entire table (of my extended Taiwanese family) gestured “Chawanmushi!” as this arrived. To me, this wasn’t Chinese food, this was completely Japanese. But to them, it was completely Taiwanese. It occurred to me how different their culture was to my own ‘Nanyang’ ideology of Chinese culture. This was the Japanese part of their Taiwanese upbringing.

Anyway, look at that savoury egg custard. Look at the texture.

That’s zen cooking right there. Beautiful unbroken blobs of cooked protein. Seeping in the gorgeous flavour of intense dried scallop with some kind of pickled mountain vegetable. I get it now, chawanmushi is suppose to nourish the soul, this nourished my nuts alright. Energising stuff.

Course 4: The seafood and vegetable platter.

Or the sashimi platter, whichever way you want to look at it. My parents are still averse to raw food, it’s just so unthinkable to have raw food (generally speaking obviously) in Chinese cooking. But in Taiwan, again, it’s that Japanese side of their culture – raw fish was part of a healthy diet.

Flamed scallops, dried beadcurd, aubergines, sea urchin (these were gorgeously creamy), sea bass (maybe?) or mackerel, local mushrooms, lotus leaves, baby abalone, smoked salmon maki with fish roe.

Here’s my little selection I picked out for myself. It was the most beautiful sashimi platter I’d ever seen assembled. It was the very crux of Taiwanese culture, a perfect fusion of China and Japan. (Mindful of history, I mean no disrespect with that last statement.)

Course 5: Lavander, Guava juice with Passionfruit.

A mid-meal palate cleanser of guava juice. At this point I thought to myself, that I never realised detoxing could ever be so delicious. And entertaining.

Course 6: Grilled prawn with pumpkin and inari sushi

A sweet beancurd skin wrapped rice ball with anchovy and a giant grilled prawn. Alright, nothing too much to write about, aside from the fact that it was a juicy prawn. Delish.

Course 7: Glutinous rice with Italian salami, wood ear and some kind of local mushroom.

Dressed up like a cooked salami nigiri, but really it’s a classic steamed glutinous rice which could have easily been made with Chinese salami too. But this was nice too. The mushroom and the woodear were of exceptional quality, needless to say the rice was redolent of homey memories.

Course 8: Boiled chicken soup with ‘blossoming’ lotus flower.

The pièce de résistance. The kids were mesmerised by the blossoming flower.

Hah. And so was I.

I forget what the boiled broth was cooked with, but it’s a mystical blend of Chinese herbs, lotus root and probably ginger. (There’s almost always ginger in Chinese boiled broths).

Like most of these Chinese boiled broths, I hazard a guess that it’s been slow cooking for at least half a day. Yup, soothing chicken soup for the soul indeed. For me, double boiled Chinese soup is a family thing, it’s the love of a wife, mother and grandmother re-condensing in the pot, and ready to energise her family after hours on the hob. For me, I could only ever love my mum’s double boiled black chicken soup (I always used to choke on shark’s fin and fish maw anyway) , but this was cooked with spiritual zen (and a blossoming lotus flower!), I applauded its heartiness. This was the very essence of Chinese cooking.

Course 9: Yuni, oatmeal (or barley), longan, red date syrup.

Yuni, or mashed yam (taro) served piping hot with a thick caramel-like syrup was incredulously decadent stuff, a bona-fide pudding, but perhaps a rare one that could actually be good for your health.

We also ate sliced kiwifruit and bellfruit, the latter being quite symbolic of Taiwan.

I still can’t believe how ridiculously cheap the meal was. It was my turn to buy everybody lunch, so I paid NTD7260 or £159.59, for six adults and two kids.

Amazing. Just amazing. Beard stroking zen masters would eat here and grow to an old age, gain amazing human wisdom, and glide from tree to tree until David Carradine sends Uma Thurman to become an apprentice.

Shi Yang is an exceptionally unique culinary experience. But it can’t win a star (yet) because there is no Taipei version of the red guide. (There is a green one).

It’s absolutely one of a kind, culturally aware, modern yet traditional, it’s on the side of a mountain. It’s a destination restaurant. The waiters meditate in between service.

What’s that I hear? Noma? How much do they charge for making you cook an egg on your table? Surely more than £26.

If the bib has a ‘social responsibility’ in its power to enhance the reputations of whole national cuisines, then they should cast wider nets. Let’s not even take the Top 50 guys into consideration – that is no more than a back patting exercise amongst the power brokers of the food industry.

But you, Mr Punter, if you are searching for a holistic culinary journey that isn’t inflated with ridiculously materialistic awards – This is the ticket.

Let’s revisit the Lung King Heen (world’s first 3 starred chinese restaurant) dilemma. The Michelinism of the repackaged cha chan teng. But really, be honest now, LKH is exactly that. Aside from that view on HK harbour, tell me, what exactly is so ground breaking about LKH’s food? The innovative use of truffle? How about the burning of my wallet with the double charged bottled water. It is no surprise that I came out of LKH feeling so drained.

Did I mention Shi Yang rolled in all the cost of tea/water for free?

Luxe chinese cooking CAN be special. I am not saying that the traditional hotel banquet Canton restaurant shouldn’t be celebrated, it should and rightly so it is already. But I also think that the culinary world needs to look closer at ‘outcasts’ of Chinese cooking like Shi Yang which is creating something truly different. It changed my ideas of what Chinese cooking could be.

Call me a hopeless romantic but I just love the idea of this place: A remote getaway location wrapped within nature, cooking that is not only nourishing, but healthy, seasonal and entirely local. You have to travel to experience it, Shi Yang cannot come to you on a plane to Harrods.

So if you ask me about luxury Chinese food, and who to pat on the back, then I would very much like to put my paws on Mr Lin. This is a clean slate, purer beginnings, and it is not the tired old design of those dripping in the indulgence of excesses where haute cuisine is a place to broker the next depression. Of course, high cooking is inexorably linked to money, after all no matter how puritanical we all aspire to be, in the end, money makes the world go around. Especially in the restaurant business which depends on it. It’s business after all. Not to say money moves all intentions, but really we need to be realistic, and where lots of money is generated, great restaurants follow closely behind. Having said that, there are the outliers, and those are ones which really intrigue. (Also discounting the obvious exceptions to every stereotype)

All things considered, Shi Yang is a gem, it’s just fantastic. This is a gastronomic experience like none other, it is nearly spiritual, and – to borrow an oft abused word to describe destination restaurants – a genuine pilgrimage. Most importantly I would go back, partly because I can afford to. This is the reason why people like us collect restaurant experiences. This is what I aspire to write about. This is why restaurant blogs really exist. Now book a flight to Taiwan.

The Gist of It

Shi Yang Culture Restaurant
Taiwanese, £30pp
No. 7, Ln.350, Sec.3, XiWan Rd
XiZhi City, Taipei County, Taiwan
Tel : +886-2-2646-2266

There are others : Andre in Taiwan ; My Several Worlds ; Taipei Times ; Pace J Miller ;

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First things first, check out the much advertised view from the Four Seasons Hotel restaurant (let’s face it, this is the view that has won it the coveted third star) :

Hong Kong has long been considered the gastronomic jewel of South East Asia. It is as much the home of the well-travelled Cantonese cuisine as it is from its birthplace in nearby Guangdong.

For the latter half of the 20th century, Hong Kong flourished become a powerful economic beacon – and one of the last bastions of British colonial power – in Asia. Perhaps the greatest gift the Brits gave to the lands which surround the fragrant harbour was free trade.

Eventually, Britain’s 99 year lease hold on HK expired in 1997, and as you know China couldn’t wait have custody of their beloved lost port returned to them. Today, Hong Kong still plays the major part of the ‘One Country, Two systems’ structure of governance, which in many respects is in place to preserve HK’s sustained prosperity.

I was about 13 when I was last in Hong Kong (my Cantonese never progressing past that time) but my food memories of the city of islands are as fresh steamed fish. Blue-boned ‘swimming’ garoupa, piping hot egg tarts, chewy-bouncy prawn cheung fun and the ‘dissolve-on-first-bite’ char siu buns. My uncle has been living in Hong Kong for at least 30 years, he had now silvered into a gentle old man. His children teach other children and discipline guilty men.

The standard of food in Hong Kong is very high, food is part of the pride of Chinese culture. Certainly when it comes to Cantonese cuisine, really, you’re not gonna find better Cantonese food in the world.

Ok now for my ill-informed bloggero insights. Here’s how I see it right – Cantonese food in HK is revered because of two very important cultural outlooks on eating:

1. HKers are obsessed with super fresh produce, especially seafood, hence the colloquial to insist on ‘swimming fish’ when ordering at a restaurant. Which is to say that the fish is alive and flopping and not frozen before cooking. This is why you see fish tanks greet diners at the entrance of Chinese restaurants. Plus its good Feng-Shui. So I think.

2. ‘Eat it while it’s hot’. Personally food that is served piping hot burns my cat tongue, but in HK cuisine, it leads on from the fresh produce. Cook it while it still flops, and eat it as soon as it slides off the sizzling wok. When food goes cold, it goes in the bin.

So.. for LKH to beat the standard HK cha chan teng to three stars, Chef Chan must have had to pull off some amazing feats.

Say what you like about hotels in London, but personally I think hotels in London are too old. South East Asia’s hotels are overly luxurious in comparison. These days they aren’t exactly cheap, but still they are more affordable, considering the scale of luxury. I stayed at The Langham in Tsim Sha Tsui (itself hosts T’ang Court, Michelin-starred Canton restaurant) and I was blown away by the luxe, and excellent housekeeping.

Anyway, so we take the lift up to 4th floor to LKH. The restaurant is massive. Low-lit, with low wavy brass ceilings, huge bouquets of flowers. To be honest, this is just another anonymous high budget, high brow, money-money ambiance. It’s old fashion and will probably look good in a movie, but really its devoid of any character whatsoever. This is where the guy who employs your dad’s boss’s boss would take his client to keep his employees employed.

Except for the view of the most famous fragrant harbour in Asia of course. At night with all the Kowloon lights glowing, and high speed vintage junks jetting about the water – I have to say, I was impressed.

The menu – oh man it’s long. Too long, you best read it yourself. It reads like any Chinese banquet menu with ‘big fish and big vegetables’ such as abalone, fish maw and birds nest. However, the old world premium ingredients which get the bib all excited, like foie gras and truffle are also present. To me, that kind of thing is a little unnecessary, from a cynical point of view, it’s just the chef fishing for brownie points. And wasabi. I know its permeated Chinese restaurants, but I still find it weird. Wasabi is Japanese, dare I say, it’s a contaminant.

The chef who has achieved the ‘historic’ 3 star win is Chef Chan Yan Tak.

Amuse bouche : Pickled beef shin with pickled lettuce and oyster sauce.

Served cold, it was perfectly sweet, salty and a little pickled. Sort of like pickled brawn. Amusing.

Stewed Frogs’ Legs and Chicken Casserole with Taro in Coconut Milk HKD200 (£18)

Huh? Coconut milk and Taro in Cantonese food? In a self-styled purveyor of the finest Cantonese food? In what world.

This is skidding into the Pan-Asian curb, maybe even a little Nyonya and I think it so dangerously easy it is for these kind of restaurants to fall into this trap. I mean, stars means continual innovation yes? Or at least a commitment to creativity and an effort to carve signature dishes.

Tradition aside, the first dish showed that this was a capable kitchen. The dish was well cooked, flavours were balanced and it was nice dish of food to eat. The coconut soup was a little like a mushroom soup,a salty coconut elixir. Nice. Umami, calming, hearty, soothing. The little bulbs of frog thigh muscle were incredibly delicious.

They must have selected the athletes amongst edible Chinese frogs. If you’ve never had frog, it tastes like chicken. Serious. We couldn’t tell the chicken from the frog legs apart from that the chicken were so perfected sliced, that these chefs could have careers filleting sashimi as sushi itamaes. I could find little fault with the dish, in fact I quite enjoyed it.

It was definitely seasoned perfectly, and the produce was certainly of a high standard. But was the recipe ground shatteringly memorable? I wouldn’t say that my local Thai restaurant’s green curry is better, but it’s not really that far off. For £18, completely overpriced and in its ***, fine dining hotel setting, and as one of Chef Chan’s specialities – it felt out of place. I can appreciate the creativity but I can’t shake the feeling like it was a borrowed recipe from another Asian cuisine. Having said that, let’s not take away from the fact that it was cooked well, and tasted nice.

Wok-Fried Prawns with Shrimp Roe, Ginger and Spring Onions. HKD360 (£32)

This was definitely wowzers for me. The prawns were really muscular and bouncy, superiorly fresh buggers. There was pleasant ‘wok-hei’ , a gentle caramalised crispness to the exterior, and that texture, it was so good it may as well have been black magic. I thought the roe covering the prawns (now fried and grainy like texture, akin to sand in cockles) made for an interesting texture. The smell of grilled roe. Mmmm. Yeah. Classic Hong Kong cooking here, and perhaps the best stir-fry prawns I’ve yet had.

Braised Australian Wagyu Beef Cheek in Gravy. HKD300 (£27)

Can you see the tendon bits? These melted in the mouth tremendously as beef cheeks should. The melty texture was another sign of a really an extremely able kitchen. The sauce was very sweet and fragrant. Like vanilla ice cream mixed with oyster sauce. But perhaps, a little too sweet, and it exacerbated the already mature flavours of cheek. So it was nice, but the more I ate it, the more I thought it was a little overwhelming. It’s a departure from the concept of ‘purity of original flavour’ as this was quite a heavy dish. Good but no dice.

Wok-Fried Iberico Pork Loin in X.O. Chili Sauce HKD220 (£20)

Our Maitre’d tells us that they usually use Japanese black pigs (Kagoshima’s which in turn are descended from Berkshires – an English rare breed) , but apparently they are a little hard to come by this time of year. So we had to make do with Ibericos.

Pork were expertly filleted, every slice was pillowy tender. A little chilli, a little peppery, a little bit of wok-hei. Yeah this is classic wok-fried pork, dare I say, it’s more Hakka than Cantonese, more Taichung than Hong Kong. It was good but no more.

Wok-fried Kai Lan with garlic HKD120 (£11)

Some vegetables to ease digestion. It was soggy and terrible. It was as if the kitchen thought it was beneath them to stir-fry some vegetables, as opposed to cooking more premium ingredients. Considering having a plate of vegetables are the very heart of any Chinese meal, this was really disappointing.

Lung King Heen Lobster Fried Rice with Seafood HKD260 (£24)

I was looking forward to this, but it was awful. Given there was lobster, the flavour was surprisingly flat, save for the sharp after taste of shellfish. The rice may have been too fresh, that is to say, a little too sticky. Good fried rice is all about the individual grains. You can only achieve that kind of consistency with overnight rice that’s been ‘aging’ in the fridge. In terms of presentation, I was expecting more gold than green and dull yellow. My missus had it and looked up, my dad had it and he put his chopsticks down. We all thought it was a bit of a joke, and an expensive one at £24.

Look, I’m old fashioned and a little romantic. A good Chinese cook is defined by how well he manages the fundamentals. Fried rice is a fundamental. Fried Ho Fun is a fundamental. Stir-fried fish fillet is a fundamental. Char siu rice is fundamental. Stars apart, what separates the true greats from the merely good ones are guys who have the innane knack in measuring the exact amount of sweet versus the salty to achieve a rare clarity of flavour. This holy grail of balance is the essence of Cantonese cooking, if not the crux of cooking in general. This fried rice wasn’t it.

Double-Boiled Egg White Milk Custard with Bird’s Nest HKD130 (£12)

That virgin-like unbroken milk protein texture, somewhere wobbly between tofu and pannacotta was superb. Two huge spoonfuls of birds nest was also a rush of blood. What I didn’t like was how flavourless it was. It was served piping hot when I thought it really needed to be rested before service. Because of the blandness, I kept imagining phantom ginger flavours, or maybe there were faint ginger flavours. I don’t know I couldn’t tell. As far as I was concerned, this was wet tofu with sparrow phlegm. I didn’t like that. It needed at least two rock sugars dissolved into it. It needed to be soaking in a rock sugar broth. God, it was so frustrating to end on such imbalance. £12? Alright, for the amount of bird’s nest in the dessert, the pricing was justifiable.

Petit Fours : Tonic medlar and petal cake.

The medlar jelly cakes were a pleasant finish. It’s also a signature of Tim Ho Wan – the 1 starred dim sum place in Mong Kok, which coincidentally is started up by an ex-LKH dim sum chef. (I’ll write about that following this post)

I made the old man (thanks dad) pay HKD2159.30 (£197) for the meal for three. Two bottles of Perrier and a tea. No wine. That works out to roughly £70 per person. Considering we didn’t have live fish, lobster, abalone or sharks’ fin (hush hush, no I don’t eat that stuff) – it’s very dear.

It didn’t exceed expectations, but it didn’t disappoint either. The cooking was definitely on point, precise even and food was mostly delicious. But it was no better than most Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong. Three stars? An exceptional detour into the very pinnacle of Chinese cooking? That it is not.

It is the world’s first three starred Chinese restaurant, but it is also the world’s emptiest three starred restaurant on a saturday night. Looking around us, I counted maybe ten tables at 1st sitting. The restaurant may as well be empty for 2nd sitting. So much so, chefs were seen wandering around the dining room, perhaps knocking off home for an early night. Considering the strong eating-out culture in Hong Kong, I think an empty dining room is a sign that the michelin love is not shared by the everyman in HK.

I was startled really, and a little saddened. After all, I am Chinese, and I would like to be proud of the ultimate representative of Chinese cuisine. It’s nice that the bib has enhanced Chinese cooking’s international credibility, but I doubt Lung King Heen is the right establishment to carry the torch.

Not to say that it’s terrible, it’s pretty good, just not that much better than most of the restaurants in Hong Kong. The night before, my uncle took me to some Chinese restaurant (whose name I forgot to take down) at Telford Plaza in Kowloon Bay, and it was absolutely rammed, with queues. Where was the bon vivant spirit? It was the quietest Chinese restaurant I’d ever been to, it was so boring I was falling asleep.

How about service I hear you ask ? Well, we were (gently) coerced into ordering bottled water, so we asked for a Perrier. At the end of the bottle, I specifically asked the waiter NOT bring us a second bottle. So we ate, and unsuspectingly, my half empty glass of water was mysteriously topped up a quater of an hour after I said no to the 2nd bottle. Stupidly, I assumed this was the restaurant offering it on the house. When we got the bill, they charged us for 2 bottles of Perrier, at HKD95 each. Of course, how idiotic of me to assume the good samaritan 3 starred restaurants are suppose to be. That’s nearly £9 per 500ml bottle. What a bloody rip-off. Plus service, it works out to £20 for two bottles of water. To me, that’s super fail, irrespective of stars. And here I thought restaurants had gotten over trying to con diners by sneaking in all the ++’s to inflate the bill. It’s a cheap shot if anything.

I did look at the wine list, in case you wondered. It was mostly French, a little Italian, a couple of Rieslings thrown in. For me, I didn’t fly 10,000 miles to swig wine which has travelled the same distance to get here. This could have been an opportunity to feature some Asian brew – how about some of that Chinese grape wine (Ningxia?) or some baijiu (Chinese white wine made from rice or sorghum, but perhaps not for the faint of heart). Maybe some Taiwanese Huatiaw wine? There is a long history of alcohol in Chinese culture going back millennia, and we drink to celebrate. It may not be as tightly classified as the cru system in France, and so procuring good examples may be a little harder than the obvious Châteauneuf-du-Pape, but I would have liked to have seen at least a small selection on the wine list. To have nought at the ultimate Chinese restaurant is a little disappointing.

Of course, it’s difficult not to get caught up in criticising the Michelin selection system. I could dig into the bib like this dude has done in his 2000+ word literal onslaught on how aghast his meal at the recently crowned two starred Hand & Flowers in Marlow was. He does have a point, Kerridge’s pub is lovely, but it’s exactly the kind of place which would invite negative attention because of the expectation that comes with two stars.

The issue here is expectation. If Lung King Heen didn’t carry stars and charged half the money for the food (with the view) – then yes, I’d say it’s pretty good food. Not quite the best Chinese food I’d ever eaten though, but as I said, it was precision work. Just good. 7/10 kind of thing.

To paraphrase my buddy Jackie, the bib anoints tourist attractions. That little red guide is a convenient guide book for people who are either retired, have build up their cake and spending the icing or have access to expense accounts. I definitely felt a little ripped off…for my dad.

Stars effectively grants a restaurant the license to charge high prices. Unless money is not a concern (let’s face it, people who don’t have money problems, don’t need to read food blogs, they’ll just go and try it) , the rest of us are still looking for some hint of value for money. One could argue it is just economics to price out the majority, and to do the business of those who are serious about food or those who can simply afford to do so.

Either way, perceived value is linked to expectation. Making things expensive doesn’t make it taste better, but it certainly increases the pomp factor and this only serves to increase diner scrutiny, and this mutual diner-restaurant pressure makes the meal unbearable torturous to sit through.

This is the intriguing aspect of michelin surfing, and how easily fine dining is becoming a parody of self-important arrogant idiots (such as myself) who think I’ve scaled some sort of mountain simply by paying for the privilege to eat in a place which is highly recommended in a guide book. The joke is ultimately on me (or my dad in this case, as he paid for it.)

Perhaps it is a sign of changing attitudes what with the fall of Wall Street worship. Maybe I’ve lost touch with the romance of eating-out but there seems to be little redeeming about discovering high end dining. Especially in a city like Hong Kong, where the richest eating experiences can be found on the streets. Like a take-away egg tart vendor that’s been doing it for two generations, and still charging 1980 prices for their egg tarts (that’s 20p (HKD2.5) each) or having fried ho fun with swiss sauce at Tsui Wah.

In a way this restaurant is unnatural in its local habitat. This tourist attraction is as alien as I am foreign to this country. It seems like it is designed for foreigners like me to come and gawk at the emperors new clothes, in doing so it has stripped it the local charm that makes Cantonese cuisine so endearing.

Lung King Heen has the view of a dragon yes, but the dragon has his eyes closed. On the surface, this is a luxury restaurant, it’s just a shame the food is so devoid of the rich culture it is suppose to represent.

But the 3 stars still intrigues you doesn’t it? You are still curious because as much as you think you lament the red guide, you still respect the macaroons. You respect what it means for the chef to be blessed with those things. To have three of them, you want to collect the experience of having been there. Look at me, 3000 words in and I still refuse to stop the verbal diarrhoea.

Unfortunately for me, Lung King Heen falls in the stereotypical tragedy of one-shot special occasion dining. I’m glad I’ve been there and done it, but never again. I’d rather stand in the rain and queue for a piping hot egg tart than come here. I wonder if this is the kind of success the chef wants to be known for?

So my apologies oh great Chef Chan, I think you and your team can definitely cook, but I think the holistic experience of Lung King Heen is a burden of its own burgeoning design and a victim of its own success.

To my beloved reader thinking about what to eat during your next HK visit: I would recommend that you go out there and discover Kowloon by visiting all the cha chan tengs you come across and not waste two hours being isolated in the ivory tower eating abalone snarling at HK harbour. But you already know that.

The Gist of It

Lung King Heen
Cantonese, £80pp
Four Seasons Hotel,
8 Finance Street, Hong Kong.
Tel : (852) 3196-8880

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Wet, hot, late in the night, an empty street and a full restaurant, ah… bonjour Paris. We arrived in Gare du Nord just after nine at night, taking the Eurostar from St Pancras. It took us a while to find our hotel in Madeleine ( The Le Vignon, a delightful getaway, which I highly commend) but as soon as we dropped our bags, we were back on the Metro again. Our destination was Goncourt, we were out to find the 9th best restaurant in the world. It’s quite impossible to book a table over the phone, so I didn’t bother trying. I opted to turn up with a hope of getting a table for the 2nd sitting after 10pm, and in my opinion, the more appropriate way to eat supper in Paris. We were in luck, a Thursday night, there were only 3 tables ahead of us in the queue, and those from the earlier sitting were just starting to leave. So it appears that getting a table at one of the hottest restaurants in Paris wasn’t so difficult after all.

As I stood in line, I got started with two glasses of whatever was available that night – a white and a red Languedoc – while the missus scoped out Le Dauphin next door, surveying its respective queue. We were hedging our bets in deciding which two of Paris’ most famous restaurants turned tables quicker. Eventually, we decided that our first experience of cuisine de Iñaki Aizpitarte should be at his more storied bistro.

As the queue shortened, the man himself, Iñaki Aizpitarte, appeared from behind the stove to greet those waiting in line for a seat at his edgy neo-classical bistro. On the surface, Cool was a deafening wail percolating from every porous hole in the restaurant. Everything that was romantic about a darkly lit Parisian bistro fronted by a rock star chef, was present. There was no doubt in either of our minds: This was the coolest bistro in Paris. We sat down at 10.30pm.

This feeling extends to its creator, Iñaki is the very embodiment of the bistronomique culture. He is a tall slender frame, tussled dark hair, Liam Gallagher eyebrows, and a Jesus beard. Dressed in chefs robes, he was also a brooding vision of a rock and roll star. Few chefs really look as badass as this guy, even fewer have a cultish following and only an exceptionally defiant handful manage to command respect from stakeholders of hospitality by garnering a reputation of dishing out magnificent and utterly terrible cooking at the very same time. After all, there is a very fine line between those who have the ability to shape the future and those who are just plain bonkers.

As he looked out onto his patrons, I wonder what his thoughts were, my best guess would be “Fucking hell, I did alright.”.

The restaurant is rather run down, really, it’s so 1920s bistrot, it may as well be a working set as part of a period film. Tables were shaky and wooden, chairs were wooden but still sturdy, forget about table cloths and the smoky incandescence made you wish there were candles instead. The food is anything but vintage, it borrows from so much forward thinking concepts, it could represent the very resurrection of the Parisian surrealist movement. Everything about this restaurant is oxymoronic, its old-school decor is a facade, the cuisine appears to pioneer, yet feels like an afterthought. The restaurant’s sole menu doesn’t give diners a choice – the ‘menu unique’ – ironically utilitarian for a democratic restaurant. Everybody eats the same five courses, the same five amuse bouches and pay the same €55 for it. Wines by the glass were €5 each.

Five amuse bouches to start.

One, cheese puffs.

Nothing out of the ordinary here.

Two, ceviche of lime and fish.

Down that bad boy. A small wedge of fish drowning in lime juice and alcohol made this throat clearer feel like slurping a spoonful of goldfish from an aquarium.

Three, shrimp tempura.

Crunchy, with salty, purple powder. This was actually nice, but seriously, stop teasing, where’s the real food? We noticed how half the restaurant spoke English, in fact, the waiters had explained the choiceless menu to us in perfect English. It must be attributed to that World top 50 list, a lot of gastro-tourists here. What seemed intriguing was how Japanese the amuse bouches felt. Tempura, dashi… no Frenchness here.

Four, black pudding, pickled onion.

Warm, muddy, smooth, like a cafe au lait but mildly spiced with a sweetness that was chocolate-like. Not bad.

Five, dashi with shittake and lettuce..

…fishy oil. No it was umamilicious. Truly, but this initially prologue of simplification, distillation and examination of the essence of flavour was ironically tiresome. My brain was deteriorating under the second glass of anonymous wine. I searched for reasons why the beginnings of this menu was so Japanese-centric. It was mildly entertaining up to this point, but I also felt empty too. The bread basket came sans butter.

Never had I longed so much for a dollop of bearnaise and bowl of frites.

Course 1: Huitre, bar, concombre.

“Fish tataki, with poached oyster and cucumber” as the waiter quickly explained. So I scrape away the ice chips to find the oyster.

No physical oyster, but in its place a milky, ice cold sauce, which I assumed was made from the elusive oyster. The cutting crispness of cucumber brought a sense of liveliness, the low temperatures forced the texture of the fish (mackerel judging from colour) to tighten up and each bite was met with a forceful bounce. I was rather suspicious of the milky oyster sauce, it was a reminder of eating natives toward the end of April. It was nice, but one dimensional, and redolent of Viajante.

Fashion – it can become terribly cliched as it ages. Shaved ice, cucumber (and while we are at it, beetroot) feature on far too many ‘cutting edge’ restaurant menus, in my opinion. The Nordic thing may be in vogue and simplification may be an exhilarating experience for the cook, but I personally despise eating these things. They are so prevalent that they are hardly innovative anymore. It screams cop-out every time the chef pulls this trick. Cold cucumber, cold beetroot, with oh let me guess, goat’s curd, whipped. Fucking hell. Chefs – please let this obsession stop.

Course 2: Cabillaud, navet, radish, manzanilla

Dastardly simple, but one in which the genius came out to play – this was a lovely dish. Deft slices of turnip and radish layered atop beautiful nuggets of cod. I stuck my nose in there before I ate, mmm, the smell of white radish and white fish. Eating this was like making love underwater, every mouthful was smooth texture running across more smooth texture, the fish was so tender, mermaids were weeping. I’m sure the fish was sous-vided and I assume cooked with the lovely butter and manzanilla sauce, the fish was smothered in. That sauce… oh it was utterly sublime. It was heartbreaking eating such a fine example of cod.

Course 4: Agneau de lait, poireau, oignon, cresson, anchois

Presented as ‘Lamb five ways’ with leek, onion, watercress, anchovy. Let’s see now, there’s loin, liver, testicles, and some sort of dehydrated salty powder. Was it powdered onion or powered anchovy? Who knows. This lamb salad was chaotic, there was so little meat, it may as well be vegetarian. For what it’s worth, it was a delicious plate of foraged ingredients. I appreciated the no bullshit approach, but it was a complete anti-climax of a main course. So it appears, this is all there is to it.

Course 5 (alternate) : Fromages du jour.

I don’t know what the cheeses were. Something fresh, perhaps a goat’s cheese, something shaved, perhaps a comte and something soft, like a morbier but without the ash.

Course 5 (Sweet) : Lait ribot, herbs, beurre noisette.

Buttermilk, herbs, and brown butter candied caramel. Soured milk ice cream, little else to report really.

Course 6: Carupano, poire.

I surmised that Carupano referred to the provenance of chocolate, liquified to conceal cubes of poached pears. Well what can I say? It’s chocolate and pear, you know what they taste like when you put them together. It was a pleasant finish.

Modern Euro with a touch of the Orient, but I think this particular meal was probably French-Japanese with a touch of Nordic frost. It’s magnificently confusing, the cooking was so completely self-indulgent, it’s hard to pin down what the chef was trying to achieve. Was he bored with success perhaps? Or could it be completely expected, that this was the work of a defiant rockstar artist who had attained his cult status by not giving a fuck what the world thinks of his cooking. There is no question of ability. Iñaki’s kitchen is capable of great things, reading his canvas of dishes in totality, I can see it all hanging together very well, truly the mark of a culinary wizard.

On the other hand, this meal is also the culinary equivalent of a cocktease. The kitchen shows you just enough to tickle your fancy, but you never get to see more than just a peek, flirting with your palate, leaving you panting for very much more. It’s exhilarating and frustrating. Perhaps we all love abit of toying with our emotions (or maybe I do) and in a way, the competitive pricing helps to soften the blow of a night of contrasts of stunning and terrible cooking. Perhaps less really is more, I was hard pressed to find better value for entertainment at €55 in the city.

Factor in the dimly-lit effervescent ambiance, the charming service, the chaotic supper-club like gastronomy, the rockstar chef watching you eat and of course the anonymous glasses of wine, I found a grander picture in which the summation of parts equated to a rather exquisite experience of a restaurant.

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I came away with a strange affection toward the meal. One might say that Le Chateaubriand possesses the certain je ne sais quo which encapsulates the very glamour of eating out. At midnight, the restaurant was still buzzing with so much energy that I couldn’t care less of what I was eating. I was totally in love with the idea that I was celebrating Life in a true Parisian Bistro. The restaurant is a very cool place to eat. So cool in fact, it has the power to transform merely ordinary plates of food into something worthy of far too much adulation.

I think Iñaki knows this and I think it’s always been part of his plan to created such a restaurant that purposely avoids a nerdist cross examination of provenance and technique. In that sense, Le C is so carefree that it is truly unpretentious. Instead, it delivers what is most important: A bloody good night out. And it surely was for us, it was an evening that produced all the sense of mystery and convivial adventure one could hope for. There’s enough substance to sustain a reputation, but its the overly stylish ambiance that ultimately won us over.

For the same reason however, it’s hard to predict a good meal here. Every other review describes a completely different cuisine, giving the impression that Le Chateaubriand is a kind of thematic and seasonal supper-club. If anything, this type of trend setting nomadic cooking is probably inspiring the next generation of chefs to push the boundaries of highly stylised anti-conceptual food freed from the shackles of defined regional cuisines. Roving chefs who frequent at the Loft Project come to mind.

At the end, we ate from a unique menu as described. If ratings start and end in circles, then Le C would lie somewhere in the nether-regions between 10 and 0 and 10, if that makes any sense. It was definitely not the best food I’d ever ate, but it was illuminating, terrible and memorable. Perhaps that’s why Iñaki has opened Le Dauphin next door, the princely tapas bar that is the Ying to the Yang of LeC. For starters, LeD is brightly lit with modern interior designs. At the very least, it lets you choose what you want to eat. I think he knows those who were led on by a meal at LeC, would want a full undressing of his recipe book. By all accounts, this is where the real cooking actually happens, and a pressure relief for us gastro-tourist who love nothing more than to pretend to pontificate as if we are paid to do it like the esteemed dead tree hacks we worship. This must all be just a humorous game to Iñaki.

I didn’t make it that far on this trip however, but I suspect I will be gravitating toward Goncourt again, the next time I am in Paris.

The Deets.

Le Chateaubriand
New Bistro, €55 set menu.
129 Avenue Parmentier
75011 Paris, France
Tel. +331 4357 4595
Metro: Goncourt

Illuminati: SmokySweet ; Nico ; Meg Zimbeck ; AGHT ; Food Snob ; foodtourist ; GT ; TEJC ; Skinny

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Perhaps this is the secret to the good cooking since this is also the view from Stephen Harris’ kitchen. I’m sure you must have heard about this place by now, quite literally every blog and hack with the vaguest interest in food, in this country has written and raved about this michelin starred restaurant. It is one amongst a very rare collection of restaurants which commands near unanimous appeal, and as such, it is often regarded as the very best this country has to offer.

The original gastropub began life when Stephen sat through a revelatory meal at Chez Nico way back in ’92, which then became his inspiration to bring the slickness of high cooking to a more accessible setting. In the subsequent years, Stephen set about unravelling the mysteries of macaroon winning ways by visiting the nation’s darling restauranteurs of the era including MPW and GR until one fine November day in 1999, he decided to buy an isolated pub nestled between the English coast on one side and rolling fields of grazing sheep on the other. He crafted a brand new kind of experience that sought to marry cutting edge decadence with a wedge of the English seaside. Boy, did he managed that and then some. Today, he holds a Michelin star, the restaurant is constantly full up, and it must be said that the local taxi operators owe a large chunk of their business to Stephen.

Venturing out of town exclusively to experience a mind blowing meal is very appealing to me these days. The anticipation and the physical act of travelling to an alien location. You feel your mind mature on the train (as you lock eyes with grazing sheep) and contemplate how life may change after the adventure. The Sportsman is located in Seasalter along the North coast of Kent, between Faversham and Whitstable. To get there, one must brave a 90 minute journey from Victoria (assuming you are travelling from London) , 70 of which on a train to Faversham, and the remainder is spent hurling on the narrow and winding roads toward the coast. The experience is pilgramatic (not a real word) altogether, when we finally reached the destination, I couldn’t help but admire how peaceful this part of the world was. The air was fresh, time moved at a more profound pace, the winds whispered sweet nothings as they brushed past my hair, how nourishing for the soul… is this what heaven looks like for us gluttons?

Decor is as unassuming as any loved-up family owned pub in the country. The all-wooden interior does feels a little shabby, musky but very down to earth leading me to speculate that this is all probably intentional. It was reminiscent of walking into a warmly welcoming B&B, the ambiance has more in common with a home than a portentous purveyor of gastronomy. Everything seems so blissful, I felt like I was on holiday. Total zen.

Taster menus were not available on weekends, so instead we were instructed to pick our 3 courses from the chalked up daily menu by the bar. I washed down with a pint of late red ale as I resisted the temptation of ordering everything on the menu. After we settled on our table, I headed to the restrooms to wash my hands, and contemplated putting a two pound coin into the condom machine, to take home a souvenir from this visit.

Home-made bread on the house.

“All baked in-house.” The restaurant’s pride in their food is immediately made known to us. It is widely understood that Harris places a lot of emphasis on his produce, leaving as little to 3rd parties as is possible, which (so I read) include churning their own butter and growing much of their own vegetables. Sourcing locally is in vogue these days, after all the ability to secure fresh ingredients of consistent quality is half the battle toward perfecting the art of sustenance. The soda bread, foccacia and sourdough were perfect.

The Starters

Crab risotto, £9.95.

I think the risotto was made with brown crab meat, and so came infused with a mud-like minerality. My attention was immediately arrested by the essence of shellfish within the risotto. The flavours were in perfect balance. The fishy brown crab allowed to clash with the brightness of the white crab meat in the ultimate battle for your tastebuds’ affections.

Many have praised how brilliantly simple the food is at The Sportsman, and based on this meal, I have to agree. It is brilliant. I’d add to that hyperbole and say that it isn’t just mere simplicity that has intrigued, rather I think they have achieved some higher form of elegance. I think it is mainly to do with the balancing of flavours – eerily harmonious. The dish was entirely easy to eat, there was such clarity in the execution, that one feels will appeal to any set of tastebuds, imparting a sense of total nourishment, and I believe that’s the beauty – you don’t need to acquire any tastes to eat here, it is simply just good grub.

Pork Terrine, £9.95.

Same story here, like the missus’ risotto, this cold terrine was another lesson that highlighted the importance of balanced flavours. I appreciated that it was not overly salty, and was made with dense chunks of pork. The cabbage wrapping was the stand out feature – imparting a crisp brightness to the flavours. Cabbage-infused pork, it was brilliant because it was such an easy dish to eat. Needless to say, the scratchings on the side were fine as well.

Mains

Roast Waterham farm chicken with bread sauce and roasting juices, £17.95.

Damn fine roast chicken in every respect. I can’t seem to remember a better version of chicken at a restaurant, maybe when I visited Harnett’s Y&A , but as chicken goes, this has become a cherished memory for me. Tender, smooth and soft textures, the bread sauce was lightly spiced, and the roasting juices enveloped the chicken with a wonderful vanilla-like fragrance. Perfumed chicken, I must also applaud the sheer quality of produce – great ingredients carefully cooked by someone who loves to eat. Most of all however, I thought the potatoes were ace. Like mashed potato croquettes as opposed to just potatoes cooked in fat.

Thornback ray, brown butter, cockles and sherry vinegar dressing, £19.95.

A sweet vinegar, feminine lemon butter flavours, smelling all lavender and tulips, the garden of flavours were as nourishing as the surroundings we were in. The fish was fresh, and so the textures were lively, the cockles were chock full of sand, and so were a little rough upon chewing. A nice fish dish, visually stunning, but if I am honest, just a shy overcooked and probably a tad under seasoned, but still it was a satisfying main dish.

Custard tart with plum ripple ice cream, £6.95.

I loved the pudding. This is better than the Marcus Wareing recipe. The textures were so cloud-like, more akin to a whippy mousse, or perhaps meringue from a baked alaska than humble baked custard – how did they manage this kind of texture? Easily the most unique custard tart I’ve yet had – the lightness was pure genius.

This is what you see when you leave The Sportsman.

Salt and fish recovered from the sea, lamb and poultry from within driving distance and vegetables grown in their back garden – This is our Noma, why travel to Copenhagen when we already have such a gem in our backyard? Amazingly, for 5 dishes of food, two coffees and two drinks, lunch was an extremely appealing £72.35. What fantastic value for money.

All in all, I think The Sportsman thoroughly deserves its reputation, this kitchen is a finely tuned instrument, Harris and his team can definitely make sweet music with pots and pans, the sheer clarity in the cooking is rarely experienced, and something that eager gluttons yearn for. But upon reflection on the ride back to London, I don’t think this meal was the revelation I’d hope it would be. It came very close to changing my life, but truthfully it didn’t. In a way, I don’t think it’s meant to, this isn’t the precise opera of Blumenthal, this is the jazz of Harris in a seriously laid back pub. I think that while the honesty and authenticity in the cooking is admirable, it is the pure romance in its setting that makes The Sportsman truly special. I can see myself coming out here again, The Sportsman is a charming restaurant and a class act. Together with Kerridge’s Hand & Flowers in Marlow, I believe they epitomise the concept of haute cuisine without table cloths. Not absolutely extravagant, but still more than worthy of a visit, if only to lock eyes with the sheep.

The Deets.

The Sportsman
British. £55pp.
Faversham Road, Kent CT5 4BP
Tel: 01227 273370
Travel: Train from Victoria to Faversham, then 15min taxi ride.

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The last couple of weeks have been particularly damaging on my wallet, so I will use this week as a time out to recall some of my adventures as a ravenous monkey abroad… this one from a recent trip to the teeny township of Haugesund in Norway.

I was sent to Norway for an assignment, a handful of return trips over the past three months or so with my first commenced on Norway’s National day. I was lucky enough to catch the local parade through the main drag of this town. Little did I know then, that it was going to be the only day I would witness so many Norwegians – or just people for that matter – congregate in the high street. Normally, Haugesund looks eerily like a ghost town, albeit, with a beautiful view of the waterfront. The township numbers are around 33,000, although that’s probably spread over large expanses of land. However, alot of people seem to live on the water front, waking to the rising sunshine bounced off the glistening waters. Some in their boats.

The name comes from Haugr for hill or mound, and sund for strait or sound, which as my astoundingly capable deductive ability had worked out the surrounding townships end with -sund, since much of the landmass in this part of the world is surrounded by water. Unsurprisingly then, most restaurants boasts fresh fish caught from the same waters, Haugesund itself once known for its Herring trade. In fact the first thing I ate after I landed on Norge soil were fish and chips. Nuggets as opposed to a whole fried fillet, superbly crispy, golden and fizzy, enveloping oily and flaky cod. The Norwegian chippy was superior to anything I’d had in London, or Durham for that matter. Expensive however, it had set me back around £14. The cost of living in Norway was simply in another league, everything seemed to cost at least twice as much as it would do in the UK. A cheeseburger would set you back at least £15!

So I asked my colleagues about dining options in the town, many had directed me to To-Glass , but some had suggested I try Lothes – the culinary pride & joy of Haugesund… also the reason why some people find the setting a tad intimidating as well. It has a great view of the water, and is based in a large two storey wooden house initially built in the 1850′s, and looking as if it had been restored faithfully to its original rendition.

Inside, one feels the age of the house. The creaking floorboards, the musky smell of dust, the low ceilings and haunting photographs, so aged it is of a parched yellow, like calotypes, of men with surrealistic facial hair wearing riding coats only seen in period films. The rest of the scene were copper lamps, waitresses dressed as French maids and white tulips for table decoration. Was I dreaming? The feeling of being in a state of disillusion was mostly due to long summer days, the summer sun hardly ever set in Norway, seeing as much as sixteen hours of light through the waking day, and night.

“A journey of six courses menu composed of fresh supply from sea and land.” … Lothes’ star feature was a six course menu that changed on daily basis, drawing from ingredients local to the area. Funnily, they are quite flexible regarding the number of courses one would like to have from their six course expedition on a plate. On this visit, I chose three from the six for 529NOK. That’s roughly sixty quid.

Cauliflower soup with crayfish and scallop.

A pan-fried and de-shelled tail of cray fish rested in the centre of the soup. Atop, a single scalllop, shaved leeks and a type of long, black seed which I couldn’t identify. The kitchen was tiny and exposed to the diners, and actually formed part of the bar, inside were two chefs. I heard the whirring of a mixer, before this dish was brought to me. The natural sweetness of the seafood was intoxicating, bursting with liveliness. The cauliflower foam, so delicate, bubbly and warming, with a sharpening intensity which set my throat on fire; Eloquently presented and elegantly cooked.

Halibut, polenta, cous-cous, asparagus, chickpeas and olive jus.

The colour of the pickled onions, drew the eye in, and as I approached the dish, the aromatic steaminess filled my sense of smell with wonderfully hearty flavours. The olive jus had wonderful acidity, and concentration about it, it reminded me of a soya sauce, which was probably from the chickpea and polenta, the fish sat on top of. I had also detected chorizo being paired with the fish – something I had sampled at To Glass as well, a pairing which I assumed was a local favourite – and the entire plate was steaming, it was redolent of something inspired by Japanese cooking. There was a wonderful interplay of competing flavours, strongly salty and sweet, with the arresting layers of textures whirling around.

Reindeer, tarragon, spinach, carrot mash.

I opted for a rich finish with the reindeer fillet, which was not dissimilar to mallard, served medium rare, it featured a hint of game, quickly overridden by the muscular gravy. Interestingly however, most of the firepower came in the form of the oyster mushrooms this dish was served with, so strong in fact, it was as if the chef had injected Stilton into the fungi.

I returned to Lothes three more times, having fallen for its entirely chic style of cooking, and felt rather cheated not taken a picture of the entirely amazing truffle risotto made with a dash of ginger and served with a monkfish fillet. But then again, it was so good, I had opted to record the meal with nothing but my five senses. I savoured every moment. Eventually, I ended one of the return meals with a pudding: An eggy pannacotta served in a juiced, and warmed soup of watermelon…

The Gist of It

Lothes Mat & Vinhus
Norwegian, 6 retter for 769 NOK.
Skippergata 4, 5527 Haugesund, Norge‎
Tel: 52 71 22 01‎

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All text and photography on this blogpost is copyright and belongs to Kang Leong, LondonEater.com. If you repost this without my permission, bad things will happen. So please don’t do it.

There are a a couple of meals from my recent trip to Taiwan which I have decided to upload separately from my Taiwanese cuisine post. This post is on Sonoma Grill, a steakhousei in Taipei. I saw value in discussing about the quality of beef in a location other than London. By quality I mean Prime USDA and Oz Wagyus. The light was good, so I took lots of pictures. If you are into the lunchtime food pornography thing then click on through soldier.

Some ‘Western’ restaurants in Asia tend to give off a faux-euro vibe, almost as if one is dining on a theatre set. It sort of looks like the real thing, in the same way a Tussauds wax model looks real. I hear Robbie Pattison just got inducted. The pantomime extends to the generic restaurant surroundings, you know, like the stuff you see in stock photos, lit with bright artificial strobes, presumably shot in the nineties, waiters in pink bowties and a lingering smell of cheese and garlic in the air… We were served San Pellegrino and for a steakhouse, Sonoma had an amazingly short winelist, perhaps about six or seven choices, most were out of stock. I wasn’t too fussed since we were in Asia – I didn’t expect to find Gajas or even David Dubands, but they did stock Montes Alphas. So it was to be a glass of house red, the ‘Sonoma select’ – Oz Shiraz. Merely passable, more like a Malbec than a full-blown Australian Shiraz, sweet and smoky, but not liquid sex. Quality imported beef is more readily available in Taiwan than in the UK, Oz wagyu is available in most restaurants. Sonoma generally has good feedback,regarding their steaks plus they are one of the pricier options in Taipei. Consider it upper crust I suppose, equivalent of the major steakhouses in London – G and H. The menu is amazingly wordy for a steakhouse and there are an innumerable ways you can have it too. The full whack is five courses and encompasses an entrée, soup, salad and pud. Oh what did I miss. I won’t really go through all the choices, but the cheapest five course lunch is a mere £12 – the price includes a 6oz strip. The lady obviously went for the light menu, and I went all out with the ala carte. Ironically, no chips on the menu, baked potatoes (with cheese) instead, keep scrolling.

The entrees. The better half ordered Seared Ahi-Tuna, and I went for the Teppan Grilled Fresh Crab Cake (£6).

The cake is pan-fried, exhibited a nice charred crunchiness as juicy bits of fresh crab hid a potent curry pow wow. Topped off with fried ginger hair, this could so nearly be Anglo-French fare, or perhaps representatively Pan-Asian, whatever it was, curry pepper and crab is a combo that works. Natural seaside saltiness was also ever present. I liked this.

Next up, the soups : Pumpkin first.

I’ll be honest I don’t remember this soup, at all. It’s not even in the blackberry, but it’s in the photo library so the missus must have had it. Doesn’t it look so tidy? I noticed this when I was in Taipei. Generally speaking, food looked so cute in comparison to over here. I wonder if food styling is a focus in Taiwainese kitchens.

My soup : Mushroom Cappuccino.

So this didn’t taste out of the ordinary, peppery, lots of chopped mushrooms, creamy, a nice touch with the foam on top, but it was a generic Campbells recipe. Cream of mushroom was something I loved ordering when I was a kid. I’ve had several versions of this in ‘Western’ restaurant all across most of South East Asia. What I tend to find is that they all taste the same. It has me thinking if there is some sort of Idiot’s guide to European cooking or if there is some sort of unwritten convention which governs how a mushroom soup should taste like. Oh wait wait, they call them cookbooks. It tastes good, but you know, but the point I’m trying to make is that it also tastes so generic.

Ceasar Salad.

Cheese, dressing, croutons, ice berg lettuce, yawn. But note the styling, what a beautifully arranged salad. I could sit here and shoot all day. A raft of midly amusing supporting acts, if a tortrous wait, steak time.

Prime USDA ‘Gourmet cut’, 8oz. £36.

Look at the little sharp end on the mash, and look at the controlled way the sauce is poured out on the plate – cute right? You won’t see that in Racine.

I had a choice and initially wanted to try the Oz Wagyu Ribeye.. but it would have cost £60 for 6oz… Ouch. I think it works out to be around £30/100g. What’s the rate in Goodman? Was it £120/kg? No matter how you cut it, £300/kg is too much money to pay. That’s nearly a hundred quid for 10oz, which is the size I would have preferred. In Kingsley, Sydney, it’s about £35 for 400g of their finest wagyu and I’ve had it before. Way good and way way cheaper. Yes.. maths drove me to order the Prime USDA ‘Gourmet’ cut. Gourmet what? I wanted the ribeye (instinctually) , but the waitress assured me that this gourmet cut was a step up from the ribeye. In fact, she said that this was the the only difference between the gourmet and ribeye was extra marbling. I believed her, I ask for medium rare. £36, 8oz.

The kitchen is visible to diners, like a teppanyaki setup, not dissimilar to Gaucho. Meat was well rested, but no smoke like Josper grilled steaks and no juiciness either. The quality of meat was astonishing though. Characteristically tender like the Nebraska stuff at Goodman, a slightly livery flavour, through and through beefiness. Kudos to the chef for making mine bloody, just the way I like it. The meat is indeed very well marbled, fatty bits were visible when cutting into the meat – yes, it was tender alright, really tender.

About the only thing I hated was the mash..

The cheesy mash we ordered on the side was categorically disgusting. Very bland, even with the baked cheese on top. It tasted more like the powdered stuff, rather than being made fresh. As for the soggy planefood style vegetables on the side – horrid. I wonder if the sides had been precooked the night before and set aside in large buffet style dishes, in the same way as some of the restaurants in kitchen nightmares would do, before Ramsay ‘saved’ them. I avoided entirely.

Dessert was a Chinese mango pudding masking as a mango flavoured pannacotta. Dense and smooth, with a chocolate truffle to finish. Perfectly tangy. The bill came to around £80 for two, I believe they took the cheesy mash off the final bill. I noticed it was etiquette to have the waitress hover while you inspect the bill and attempt to pay. I was spooked by this, I manoeuvred to shield the contents of my wallet. Dude, just go away, I can’t pay when you are watching me like a hawk.

As it turns out, quality of beef is only half of the ultimate steak equation. Searing technique makes all the difference. Yeah, I’m sticking to Goodman. This wasn’t meant to be a review, I was just going to show you pretty pictures of the meal, since the light was so clean, and I wasn’t pressured to shoot the food quickly. There is a lot less animosity in Taiwan when you pull out a camera in a restaurant compared to London. Even though, I’ve never been stopped in my foodblogging career, save for the odd look from waiting staff, they probably find it amusing, fine by me really. Even so, I always have an excuse ready just in case. My latest one being that I am on a honeymoon from Hainan (that’s where my granddad is from), sold half a liver to buy a camera and pay for the holiday, just so I could document every waking moment of my first days as a newly wed. Let’s see if Helene Darozze would stop me.

PS…

I very nearly forgot to add that I bought some Australian Wagyu to cook at home the next day. I bought Wagyu short ribs, this only set me back a tenner. I bought them from SOGO, a Japanese deparment store, much more affordable than Sonoma, plus I could inspect the beef myself. Speaking of which, check out the marbling on that bad boy – pretty awesome, no? I flashed it for about a one-minute and a half either side on a really hot pan, it came out still bloody. Great flavour, like a sort of blooming floral beefiness, needed just a pinch of sea salt to complete the umami. Nice, oh and tender too, though not super soft, it was a short rib afterall, there were some sinewy bits, should have bought a ribeye instead, but I’m saving up for a trip to Kobe.

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Hello folks, I am officially back from my month long vacation, trust you have applied yourselves positively while I’ve been away. My yearly visit to the folks is always enlightening if perspective bending though this is the first time in eight years that I went home in time to celebrate Chinese New Year. I’m carrying alot of holiday weight right now, five kilos to be exact, heavy stuff. Astrologists are predicting a gold rush this year and have interpreted the year of the Metal Tiger to be one made of solid gold. Bling. I had originally intended this post to be the closer to my run of unofficial Chinese New Year write-ups and was suppose to coincide with Chap Go Meh – the fifteenth day of the new Lunar year – the same day which also marks the end of the Chinese New year festival… but other more pressing commitments had ensured a five day delay – building websites still doesn’t quite pay the rent. I had spent most of the time travelling between Brunei, Singapore and Taiwan, the latter was where I decided to spend my money. I have good reason to stuff myself silly and I filled my schedule with pit-stops to restaurants which served something representatively local – like a crash course into the native cuisine. It’s all well and good that we have so many restaurants which cater to all sorts of world cuisines, but it occurred to me that London has been the first destination that I have sampled certain international flavours. Something as common as say pizza for example – I can’t say I’ve actually tried a Neapolitan recipe passed down from the ages. This holiday would double as gastronomic adventure and I view it as a way to build my CV in a particular style of cuisine, so that I’ll always have something to compare my London exploits against. And so Kang’s quest to catch a glimpse into the world of Taiwanese cuisine was born. Here are his notes (So weird writing in the third person).

The scene is Taipei. The capital of the island republic, it is situated on the Northern tip of the country and its name unsurprisingly translates to ‘Northern Taiwan’. Home to 2.6 million, it is an emerging ultra modern metropolis of Blade Runner style concrete jungle and it’s skyline proudly accomodates Taipei 101, once the tallest building in the world. Like all cities, there are shades of vintage buildings still lingering underneath all the shiny metal and glass. Old shop houses prop up the neon signs, lighting up the city’s night like a Christmas tree. It’s wonderfully urban, tight street corners just wide enough for cars to pass through and temperamental rainclouds which make London feel like Cyprus. In the belly of the beast lies a diverse range of restaurant, cafés and their famed night markets which play host to hundreds of independent street food vendors making it a sort of foodie’s wet dream. In fact, there is so much diversity in it’s food, a week is simply not enough time to try everything. But I tried anyway. My excursion wouldn’t be as impactful if not for my extended family taking me around the city, so I have the C and C’s to thank for all the recs.

With Londoners experiencing a spike in Sichuan food, I thought it’d be appropriate that our first stop was Chuan Ba Zhe – a Szechuan restaurant that does all-you-can-eat ‘Ma-la’ hotpots for about 8 per head.

The local flavour – Gold Medal Beer. The brew is light and carries a chrysanthemum sweetness about it – very easy drinking stuff. We started with a selection of ‘small dishes’ to share dishes and to start – something which is characteristic of a Taiwanese meal – including Kousiu (Saliva) chicken , Quaiwei (weird taste) vermicelli, Dou gan zhe (bean curd slices) and Mala tripe. As it was a Szechuan restaurant, everything was red in colour, evident of potent sliced chilli everywhere and the tranquilising effect of Szechuan pepper slowly started to grab hold of my tastebuds. Terrifying.

The main highlight of the meal was the all-you-can-eat hotpot, the freeloading aspect in that we could order as much meat or vegetables we wanted to chuck into the soup.

Now, this is properly spicy stuff. The soup was made with szechuan pepper and as I alluded to earlier, doesn’t just burn your tongue and throat, it actually conjures up a strange numbing sensation that firstly starts on the back of your tongue, and if you’re greedy, works it’s way into the back of your throat. I downed several glasses of gold medal beer to put the fire out. Eventually, I couldn’t feel my tastebuds anymore. If you head to Angelis in Kilburn or No.10 in Earls Court, you’ll be able get your hands on a Ma-la hotpot. It’s usually protocol to have a layer of oil floating on top of the soup, it’s suppose to keep the heat in and also to cook whatever you’ve dunked into the soup. I am certain that London restaurants hold back on the peppers – this place didn’t.

Our next visit would take us to the outskirts of Taipei, to the seaside township of Danshui.

We rode the MRT – Taipei’s equivalent of the tube – to Danshui and to the very end of the line. The town is a scenic getaway from the high tech city of Taipei. Here, people rolled around in vespas and flip flops and beyond the bridges, you can watch fishermen barbecueing their triumphs by the beach. Restaurants lined the coast, and as we went on a Sunday, it was as if all of Taipei had descended upon this area. We had trekked all the way here to visit the Black Shop, and to sample the locally celebrated pork chop rice.

A large bowl of their signature pork chop costs two pounds, less if our political system was in better working order. Like all umami infused food – this bowl of rice smelled hearty, rustic and fragrant. Served piping hot, the large flap of chop garnished with bean braised tofu and pickled cabbage that carried a vinegary stink. The rice was glutinous, almost sushi rice (but I daren’t claim it) and the savoury flouriness of the pork chop was unmistakable. There was a thin outer which encapsulated the piece of meat, eggs must have been used and the coating absorbed alot of moisture leading to a juiciness which softened the texture of the pork. The combination of the bean-flavoured tofu, the vinegary pickled cabbage and the soya infused egginess of the porkchop gave way to an exemplary example of umami… I finished two bowls.

The black shop was still entertaining massive queues at 3pm in the afternoon, and this was a huge restaurant spread over two floors – such was the popularity of it’s pork chop rice. While there, it was also an opportunity to give one of Taiwan’s best – if common – small dishes a try : Cold creamy tofu with sweet century egg.

When I say creamy, I mean really creamy. The texture is so consistent, it hardly broke and is akin to the density of say a pannacota. Flavoured with a sweetened soya sauce, the purity of the tofu melds well with the mushy liverness of the preserved duck eggs. The strength of this dish – in my opinion – is dependent on the quality of the tofu. The real deal, everything in London is a mere imitation.

Details

Black Shop Pork Chop rice 黑店排骨飯
8-10, Lane 62, Sec 1, Zhongzheng Road, Danshui.
Tel : 02-28052790
MRT : Danshui

We headed out bright and early the next day so that I could run a few errands while in Taipei. Things are generally cheaper, I had my Seiko Kinetic fixed for just under £40 compared to a whopping £85 minimum if I sent it to Maidenhead. I also had bought a pair of thick black rimmed glasses – Clark Kent style – for a reasonable price…. yes, as if Gary Rhodes would suddenly recognised me attempting to ‘review’ his restaurant, says my ego.

Next stop was for breakfast at a local soya milk shop.

We went to Jiang Jia, not particular special, nor exciting but it was something distinctly local and also open 24 hours a day.

A bowl of salty soya milk made with pickled lettuce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, maldive fish and a tiny splash of soya sauce – definitely a change from the rock sugar syrup of HK style sweet tofufa. My favourite were the glutinous rice roll stuffed with pork floss and pickled radish. I thought it was interesting to have a dough explosion of sorts with a youtiaw – fried dough – stuffed with a chinese style omelette on a sesame crusted bread roll – called a ‘shao bing you tiew jia dan’ or otherwise a chinese breakfast butty perhaps.

I spent alot of time getting lost in the side streets which hid makeshift markets and the occasional street food vendor, photographing this street life proved to be one of the highlights of my visit to Taipei.

All I could see was the romance of the older parts of Taipei, so rustic, raw and human, it was here that I felt the life and the buzz of the real city.

We have now just got off Dingxi station and my other half and decided to take me to one of her old favourite noodle shops. Small, unassuming and humble. There would be nothing high brow about it, but again the attraction was apparent in it’s unpretension, just so real.

And here, I had tasted one of the best spare rib & taro soups to date. The soup was oily, but filled with meaty and stocky flavours – very homely. Like most of the soupy meats I had sampled in Taipei, the spare ribs melted like ice cream.

Finally, our last destination led us to the Golden Formosa, famous for none other than authentic Taiwanese cuisine, and I was assured that it doesnt get more authentic, or local than this.

There are several variations of the ‘White-Cut’ Chicken in the different types of Chinese cuisine, and it so happens to be a local favourite in Taiwan, which claims a variation of their own. It’s a mainstay in Cantonese cooking and is a sort of a national symbol of Singapore cuisine in which it is referred to as Hainanese Chicken

The skin is salty and oily, but the meat is juice heaven and silky smooth. There is rich chicken flavour and a clinical taste on the palate. The chicken bounces with every bite and is just a joy to eat – getting breast meat to soften up is a family secret, and the breast meat at Golden formosa was much like caressing the equivalent assets of a beautifully woman, or…

Ginger tripe with bamboo shoots.

What is aromatic to a Taiwanese person just reeked to my untrained palate. This dish stank of bamboo shoots and vinegar, the tripe added to the soured livery flavours of this dish. It was a difficult mouthful for me, not my cup of tea this one, but about as Taiwanese as it could get.

Scallop and Oyster Pancake was up next.

I think the thick gravy – slimy and very fishy – was probably made from the juices scallop and the oyster. It was like a runny pizza with a dough that absorbed too much moisture. Very potent, I could only have a slice before the fishiness became overwhelming.

Finally, deep fried spare ribs.

This one I really enjoyed – one of the most memorable dishes from my trip. Crunchy popcorn like exterior, bubbly crispiness and a peppery hit with a worschester sauce tang. I am certain that there was curry powder in the mixture and which which really gave ribs a spice of life. The meat still juicy on the inside but the distinct sour and spicy crackle on the outside.

Details

Golden Formosa 金蓬萊
101 TianMu East Road, Taipei
Tel: 02-28711517
MRT: Zhishan

So that was my trip to Taipei. The most memorable meal has got to be the Pork Chop rice – simple food, but oh so good. In addition to this, I wrote up on one of Taiwan’s greatest treasure – Beef noodle soup at three of Taipei’s most respected Beef noodle houses. Alright, well a belated happy new year of the Tiger folks, hope you enjoyed my adventures away from home. I think it’s about time I got back to writing up about London again. See you monday.

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I left Berlin thinking how everything was physically larger. Perhaps the city architects mistook their metric scales for imperial ones. The repeated pattern which cover the major central train stations went on forever and they make St Pancras feel more like Covent Garden. The behemoth of trains which pass through were like one of those in an Elliot Erwitt photograph. Throbbing engines, brushed metal armoured hulls complete, smelly leather seats so large it made me feel like a midget. And that is after negotiated a gap large enough for me to fall through. As I made my way around the city, I couldn’t help but remind myself of Berlin’s history. It was a strange feeling, as if the city had absorbed the decades past into it’s character, especially at Checkpoint Charlie. Once the border security which moderated human traffic in and out of East and West Berlin. Yet at the same time, the city felt young, in that the glass encrusted urban jungle of new Berlin was visibly building itself on top of the auld one.

We had left for Berlin on the weekend of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Unfortunately, we just missed all the fireworks. I’m terrible with planning trips but luckily the better half had done most (if not all) of the hardwork and managed a nifty setup in Leonardo Hotel which was only into it’s third month of operations at that time. Yes that’s right, even the hotel rooms in Berlin were bigger than usual. It’s a hotel I would recommend since there is a currywurst seller just opposite the restaurant and which seems apt to kick off my little report on Berlin food.

Currywurst – probably Germany’s most popular ‘streetfood’.There were currywursts vendors on most street corners and usually could be had for a euro or two. It is common practice to serve sausages diced and bun-free in Germany. With currywurst, the speciality is the sweet curry ketchup sauce smothered on the sausage with generous lashing of curry powder.

It’s an efficient recipe, one that I really enjoy and just about as good as I remembered it when I was in Hamburg. The sweetness of the ketchup, the aroma of the curry powder and then the seasoned saltiness of the bouncy sausages. I think German sausages are great for their consistent texture and usually rich but pure flavour – of course I am generalising here, but I’ve never had a bad German Wurst, it is their national dish afterall. We ordered some bread rolls and chips as well – the latter of which was crunchy and nutty. Maybe it’s got something to do with German potatoes, but I think German chips taste better than they do over here. We would return to Eckherts’ Currywurst shop several times again throughout this trip to top-up, and that’s not counting the sausages we devoured at the farmer’s market near our hotel as well. Mmmm….. currywurst…

A bellyful of wurst later, what we really need then is a cup of coffee. Walking around the city, we noticed the distinct absence of that American franchise with the green logo. Instead we noted a boxy brown logo virtually at all the major U-bahn stations. It bore the name of one of the more famous Germans in history : Einstein Coffee

So we decided to give it a whirl, twice actually, and it certainly felt like a franchise. I wouldn’t say it was the best coffee I had this side of Europe, but the much more euro-centric setting was alot more appealing than a tired Starbucks.

This photograph is a bit redundant because I’m not entirely sure what to say about it. Except that it’s something which caught my eye while I was in the cafe, especially the red from the coffee machine, it’s just so vibrant. It is a blog post at the end of the day I suppose, yes welcome to my brain.

As the day turned to night, the girls came out to play.

We hit town hoping to soak in abit of that famed German party animal spirit, only to find a relatively sober entertainment district. This is abit of an after fact, apparently we ‘hit town’ a tad too early, as the party doesn’t really start till 3am in the morning. Anyway, I couldn’t wait that long for dinner in any case.

One of the first culinary destinations was Cafe Noe.

It was a cosy little wine bar – there was a wide variety of single glasses including personal favourites Spat Burgunder. Their bite-size only menu seemed more Alsatian than German, baguettes with sliced cheese and fig mustard, duck terrine and French snails. We opted for the most substantial items on the menu including a ‘flammekueche’ as well as ‘blutwurstcanapes’.

This would be my first experience of the tarte flambée which is basically a razor thin pizza base – a recipe from Alsace. A swift trip to Wiki explains that the tarte flambee was created as a way to test wood-fired ovens as the peak temperature of the oven would bake the perfect tarte flambee – A crusty border just burnt by the flames of the fired oven. We ordered toppings of coppa di Parma, sour cream and rocket (9.50 euros). Now, I’m not really the pizza connoisseur as I’ve not actually been to Italy to try an ‘authentic’ pizza (or Alsace in this case), though I enjoyed the squidgy thin base as well as the very smokey charcoaled edges. Even better I thought, were the blutwurstcanape – German black pudding chopped and then made into a sort of bruschetta. It’s more pleasant than a fry up I have to say, it’s more fragrant and alot lighter in flavour.

We are back in Bismarckstraße again, and next door from the currywurst place is a sort of foodhall and supermarket called Rogacki.

Initially I was hesistant to eat here because I wanted to sit down for a meal. The only chairs I saw were for the tables outside the establishment. Inside, it was a green-tiled mess hall with standing tables, no chairs.

Needless to say, the place was packed out. Lots of Germans who didnt speak English. We chose a seafood bar which was seemingly the centrepiece of the hall. Initially we struggled with ordering and in the end resorted to pointing at random menu items when we became ravenous. How could one not feel one’s stomach rumble with the fresh fish sizzling in front of us right?

Here we go, a selection of shellfish, pickled vegetables and parsley for decoration. Sweet, succulent and fulfilling.

The missus opted for a warming fish soup – large chunks of seafood and a glass of zingy german house white.

Touring the foodhall, I feel a little regretful that I didnt attempt to load my suitcase with a small sampling of the smoked fish on offer at Rogacki, ah well, guess I’ll have to visit Berlin again in the near future.

Finally then, one of the last restaurants we hit was Restaurant Oderquelle. You’ll forgive my shallow knowledge of Berlin’s best, so we turned to the interwebs which led us to discover Oderquelle and its good reputation among it’s online patrons.

They specialised in German-Euro Fusion, though honestly I wouldn’t be able to tell. The menu was brief and I chose to order the most exotic items I saw. First up was a hand wash cheese.

Very interesting stuff, the cheese was translucent in appearance and it looked more like a piece of fish than cheese. It didn’t taste much like a dairy product either; It was smoked and seasoned, with a scallop-like flavour. Spring onion garnishings and doused with an weird watery and oily sauce that mixed, very fishy.

For my main, Rump steak with roasted pumpkins, rocket leaves and a cauliflower creamed potato salad. The steak was beautifully rare and needed to be since this was a chunky rump. Good beefy flavours though the real star of the dish was the garnishings – toasty pumpkin sweetness, peppery as it went down. Rustic.

Well, that’s my brief account of my excursions to Europe to expand my culinary palate. I think I barely scratched the surface of gastronomy in Berlin, and Germany for that matter what with this weekend being more of a snapshot more than anything. It’s an interesting destination which doesn’t get the attention it deserves, and for the most part, the people in Berlin treat tourists with respect and we walked away with an impression that people are generally friendly. Wunderbar.

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