Location: 43-45 Oxford Rd, Reading, RG17QG

Web site: http://www.chinapalacereading.com/

Telephone number: 0118 959 6683

Previous report:  27 October 2011

New visit: 31 January 2012

Approx. cost per head: £15 plus

Cuisine: Chinese – Cantonese

Likes and dislikes: Probably one of the the best authentic Cantonese restaurant in the UK if you stick to the dim sum and main a la carte menu. Avoid the all you can eat and set meals.

Beers and wines: £3.20 for Tiger and Tsing Tao. Mediocre wine list.

Cuisine: mainly cantonese chinese food.

Summary:

China Palace always has special dishes on offer for the Chinese New Year and the subsequent weeks.

I thought that I should try it.

In fact special 2 menus are on offer – all written in Chinese. You need to ask for it if you are non Chinese and get it translated. The “New Year” menu has a dozen dishes all in good luck and rhyming words. For example eight in Chinese has a very close sound to “make” as in “fat” (make/eight) choi (money). One of the dishes on the menu was East West in harmony which in fact is Tong Pao meat. This is Chairman Mao’s favourite dish. It is belly of pork marinated in a sugar and soy mixture then steamed over a long time until the meat nearly falls apart. This was priced at £16.50. In fact all the dishes on this menu are around £20. It was excellent.  You get four large pieces of pork with broccoli. It was worth risking a heart attack to eat this. The other dishes on this menu were various seafood and to my surprise, a few elaborate vegetables dishes.

I also ordered the sweet and sour fish fillets. Cantonese call this koo loo. This was from the other special menu. This was cooked more Chinese style than the a la carte version – less fruity, less sugar and vinegar. On this menu, you can get eels etc.

In total we ordered 3 dishes ((plus salt and pepper squid) and the usual dry fried ho fun. In total the bill came to nearly £65 – with only 2 tiger beers – for 2 people.

If you want to try these special dishes – very different from the usual crispy duck, chow mein etc, you will need to go soon. The menu is only on offer for a maximum of 4 weeks – depending on demand – in the evening.

E

PS Reading is now a pain to park. Meters everywhere. Its 8am to 8pm, 7 days a weeks. They have also taken away the single yellow lines. It all meters or double yellow lines

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Location: 43-45 Oxford Rd, Reading, RG17QG

Web site: http://www.chinapalacereading.com/

Telephone number: 0118 959 6683

Date of last report 6 October 2009 (several)

Date of this visit: 27 October 2011

Approx. cost per head: £15 plus

Cuisine: Chinese – Cantonese

Likes and dislikes: Probably one of the the best authentic Cantonese restaurant in the UK if you stick to the dim sum and main a la carte menu. Avoid the all you can eat and set meals.

Beers and wines: £3.20 for Tiger and Tsing Tao. Mediocre wine list.

Summary:

I haven’t been to this restaurant for well over 6 months. It was doing very well and on a weekday lunch was about half full.

The menu is always the same and prices are the same as last year.

The dim sum starts at £2.70 a dish.

We had char sui chung fun, prawn dumplings (har gaw), char sui puffs, char sui buns – yes char sui in 3 different ways – dry fried beef hor fun , yam croquets and garlic pea shoots. They were all good. The total bill including drinks – coke, tiger beer – and service came to £60.

Since the redecoration 4 years ago, the place is beginning to look a bit worn but the food is still good. Compared to my recent Chinese encounters (Princess Garden and Wing Tai), this place is definitely superior in terms of the standard of cuisine and service. Prices are about the same. Parking is in West Street Mall – beware of narrow lanes leading up to the car park – just wide enough for a MPV.

E

Address: Unit 2, Wing Yip Business Centre, 395 Edgeware Road, London NW2 6LN

Telephone: 020 8452 2333

Website: N/A

Date of visit: 24 October 2011

Costs:  Around £15 a head plus drinks

Wines and beer:  Tsing Tao – £3.40 a bottle. Wines and sake available at reasonable markup.

Likes and dislikes: The bill comes as a total with being itemised. There is also no mention on the bill that service charge has been add

Opening hours: 11.00am – 11.00pm & days a week.

Last visit: 20 February 2010

Summary:

This is a huge on room restaurant on the corner of the Wing Yip business centre which also houses the north London branch of the Wing Yip supermarket. There are car parks – outdoor and underground – servicing the site.

Let’s start with the supermarket. This is one of the largest Chinese Supermarket chain in the UYK. They also have branches in Croydon, Birmingham and Manchester. Besides the usual sauces, dried spices and food, they also have a huge freezer section and  fresh meat (bulk) and vegetable sections as well as a fresh fish counter including “live” lobster and crab tanks. Between the supermarket and the Restaurant, there is a Chinese Bakery and Cafe which also sells various types of cooked meats e.g., roast duck and Char sui.

The restaurant is a huge hall which would easily accommodate 200 diners plus. The tables are well spaced apart.

The menu is typically Cantonese with dim sum served during lunch time – served till 5pm. Service is efficient – the food arriving within 10 minutes after we ordered.

The dim sum menu offers a choice of 80 different items with over 60 types of savoury steamed and fried dumplings etc. There are also 10 different types of sweet dumplings or tarts. Prices start at £2.70 a portion

They also have set meals for 2, 3 or even larger groups as well as the a la carte. Specials on another printed menu include various types of tofu, fish belly and various combinations of roast meats – served warm. The a la carte dishes start at around £8, rising to over £30 for the abalone and Peking duck. Noodles and rice is around £8 a dish. Please note that this is essentially a Cantonese Restaurant but  they do offer Peking and Crispy Duck as well as string beans with minced pork – all northern dishes.

We had the Yam croquet (very good), the char sui tart and char sui buns, char sui chung fun (cannelloni), the mixed meat platter, pea shoots with garlic, black bean chicken (bit too sweet), salt and pepper squid (top marks) and the sliced pork chow mein. The chow mein or noodles were poor, the base not crispy at all, the rest were all right. Including a few beers and coca cola, the bill came to just over £100 for 5. Not bad at all. The bill here is not itemised and service charge is not mentioned but it was added. So, make sure you have a feel for the costs of the meal.

The place was packed out on a Monday lunch time – half term ? Each table had at least 2 sittings  or more.

The food here is average but it benefitted from the free parking outside and the supermarket next door.

E

Address: 8-10 North Audley Street, London W1K 6ZD

Telephone: 020 7493 3223

Website: www.princessgardenofmayfair.com

Date of visit: 2 October 2011

Costs: Dim Sum from £2.60 per dish. Certain main courses around £30-£40

Wines and beer: Did not check – I was a guest – but it won’t be cheap as this is Mayfair

Likes and dislikes: Nice restaurant, decent food at a decent price but the waiting – despite booking – is poor.

Cuisine: Chinese – north and south

Summary:

This is a very modern and chic restaurant south of Oxford Street. Bright and noisy. Everyone seems to shout in a Chinese Restaurant irrespective of nationality. On the day we went (Sunday lunch), the place was full of Chinese but there were a significant number of non Chinese eating lunch. I was told that the clientele and atmosphere is completely different on a weekday evening.

There is a lounge/bar and two separate dining rooms.

They make you wait in the lounge despite having booked empty tables in the restaurant – is this a ploy to sell drinks? On the day I went, most people were drinking mineral water or tea so the ploy is questionable. It certainly isn’t due to a lack of staff as there were plenty.

This was a lunch to celebrate a relative’s birthday. There were 7 adults and 2 children.

We went for the usual array of dumplings – sui mai, har gaw – turnip cake, chung fun etc. They were all very good. The pot sticker was big and fat but was not crisp enough at the base. We also had crab meat fried rice – they do not do fried rice with char sui – and pork julienne fried noodles.

Princess Garden is supposed to be a Northern Chinese Restaurant and they do have unusual dishes that you will not get in a normal Chinese Restaurant e.g. Chinese smoked fish.

The total bill including 3 ching tao beer and two glasses of dry white and 2 juices came to just over £140 and we all had plenty to eat.

The food here is above average and is certainly better than most of the dim sum establishments in Soho. I rate the food here as better than Kai’s – which has a Michelin Star – down in South Audley Street.

E

Address: 196 Stanley Road, Teddington, Middx TW11 8UE

Telephone number: 020 8943 1059

Website: http://www.imperialchinalondon.co.uk/

Date of visit: 11 March 2011

Approximate cost per head: £20 plus

Comments on wine list/beer: Basic list. Mark up on the low side. Have got first growths (in a bad year) on the list. Pre-ordering required for first growth

Cuisine: Cantonese, Chinese

Parking: Outside on the road – after 6pm and at weekends.

Nearest station: Strawberry Hill

Summary:

I booked for 4. Unfortunately, J and C’s daughter couldn’t make it, so we were down to 3. J &C have always been generous to me so I decided to row the boat out.

Luckily for me, Simon (chef patron) was there and he made a few suggestions.

To start with, we had “dragon beard prawns”. This is a Simon invention and is not on the menu. It is a large “tiger prawns”, stuffed with sliced mango and deep fried in a batter with thin noodles. The result is that you end up with a “hairy” looked prawn. It was excellent – we had one each.

Next up was  lobster in ginger and onion sauce. Simon recommended that the lobster is served on top of a nest of fried crispy noodles. Again, this worked extremely well as the clingy sauce from the lobster is “soaked” into the noodles. The sauce was just right, not too gingery – perfect combination of garlic, spring onion, ginger and Chinese wine.

We then had a quarter crispy dick in taro. This is a boned piece of crispy duck – cooked but not shredded – covered in thinly shredded taro – a really fine combination of crispy exterior with melting duck flesh on the inside.

Next up was Chinese steak – sliced steaks in a tomato and onion sweet and sour sauce. What was nice about this dish was that it was not too sweet. This was accompanied by scallops with asparagus. This was very pleasant, slight down side was that the scallops were previously froze. We also had “do mew” – the greens of mange tout or pea shoots with mushroom and garlic and mixed fried rice.

The total bill including a bottle of Moet champagne (£45) and service charge came to £163.60.

In my view, Imperial China is probably one of the best Chinese Restaurants in the UK – offering “authentic” Cantonese cooking. It certainly is the best I have eaten in so far and I have eaten in a few rated in the Michelin Guide. The décor of the place is good. They will have to improve their wine list if they want a Michelin star.

E

Address:  17 Market Lane, Melbourne, Australia

Telephone number: (0p3) 9662 3655

Website: www.flower-drum.com

Date of visit: 14 January 2010

Price guide: Expect to pay above A$60 a head

Comments on wine and beer: Very extensive list with wines mainly from Australia, New Zealand, France and Italy. A few bottles are available under $100

Cuisine: Cantonese

Exchange rate: A$1 = £0.65

Summary:

I was reading the Quantus in-flight magazine and came across an article from Neil Perry (Rockpool) about the 10 best dishes – around the world – he ate in 2010. Neil recommended the drunken (and roast)  squab at the Flower Drum in Melbourne. So, when I got here, I booked a table.

The restaurant (started in 1975) used to be based in Little Bourke St and has now moved round the corner onto Market Lane. As I got to the restaurant, I noticed that the Chinese name for Flower Drum is Ten Thousand Birthdays Palace.

Entry is via a red door in Market Lane, you then take the lift to the first floor with a room decorated in red and black with tables well spaced apart – approx 2 meters plus between tables. I have never ever encountered such generous used of space in a restaurant.

Around the space where lift is housed, the wall is plastered with hundreds of awards and accolades.

The menu is in English and there are two set meals  – $175 for 6 courses and $99 for 4 courses. The a la carte dishes range from around $18 onwards.

The restaurant manager claimed that Peking Duck is their speciality ($18 for 2 portions). That is a bit strange as the restaurant also claimed  to specialise in Cantonese Cuisine. Any way, I went for it. It came as two very meaty pieces of roast duck breasts – each piece must be around ¼ of a breast. It was rolled up in a pancake with scallions and cucumber with a smear of hoisin sauce in front of you.  Now Peking duck (crispy duck is a british invention – based on aromatic fried duck. The real aromatic crispy duck  does not come with pancakes and hoisin sauce) is normally sliced thin and you eat it for its crispy skin rather than the flesh. In fact the skin of my piece of duck was not particularly crispy and I suspect that they are using de-boned Cantonese roast duck.

I then had the roast squab ($46)- served with a pepper and salt dip as well as a bowl of lemon juice. This was pretty good and it turned out to be a heavily marinated whole bird. It was meaty and moist and very tasty. I also had the chicken with ginger ($26). This was also ok from a taste point of view but I found the chicken pieces too large – I preferred it julienne size.

The mixed fried rice ($18) was very good. They used Japanese sticky rice which makes it chewy. The prawns in the rice were again big pieces – size of a piece of chocolate. Do they have a thing about big pieces of meat in Melbourne?

I also managed to find a 2004 Knights Cabernet Sauvignon at $59 which turned out to be very drinkable.

My overall impression was good but this is not “kosher” Chinese Food. There is a wave of these restaurants around the world that has adjusted Chinese food to a more western approach (not quite fusion), improving the level of service  as well as hiking the price up to a Michelin Star standard. By the way, service was exceptional here!

E

Address: 6^th floor, Westfield, 188 Pitt St, Sydney, Australia

Telephone number: (02) 9223 8822

Website: www.pheonixrestaurants.com.au

Date of visit: 7 January 2011

Price guide:  Dim Sum from $5.50

Comments on wine and beer:  Tsing Tao $7.50 a bottle. Reasonable Oz wine list.

Cuisine: Chinese (Cantonese)

Exchange rate: A$1 = £0.65

Summary:

Sited on the 6^th floor in Westfield, this is a large and modern Chinese Restaurant. During lunch time, they served dim sum on trolleys.

The dim sum carts would come by and you would point at whatever you wanted. It gets a bit difficult with steamed food as they are served in brown bamboo containers. The ladies that push the trolleys around will announce what they have and tout for business, so the chance of you going without is zero.

The trolleys offered more than dim sum, there were plates of roast meat of various types, stirred fried vegetables as well as noodles. Desserts were also available. On this day, they were offering mango pudding, mango pancakes and jellies. There are no menus, prices are based on what they termed “large”, “medium” and “small” dishes. There is a card on the table which the servers will stamp in the appropriate price area. When you cash up, the waiter/waitress just adds up the bill based on the stamps on the card. You can eat a full blown meal and be out within 15 minutes.

I had prawn toasts, spring rolls and yam croquettes. They were all warm – a downside of trolley meals – not hot. The spring rolls had loads of vegetables in it – I am not sure if they were vegetarian ones. The prawn toast was a small square toast, spread with the usual minced prawn/pork mixture. Where it scored wass that unlike the UK, there was a proper prawn sitting on top of the meat paste – a mixture of minced pork, minced prawns and chives.

Including a bottle of beer, the total bill came to just over $20. I was in and out in 15 minutes – beat that for fast food.

E

Address: 10 East 38^th Street, New York, NY 10016

Telephone number: +1 212 448 1199

Website:

Date of visit:

Price Guide : lunch special starts at $6.95

Comments on wine and beer: $4 for a Chinese beer, $5 for a glass of wine. There is a wine list with one or two interesting bottles at the high end.

Summary:

I have been here several times over the past decade. It is a reliable Shanghainese Chinese in mid town Manhatten between Maidison and 5^th Avenue. My last visit was just over 3 years ago. Since then, the restaurant has been de-listed from the Zagat Guide.

The place was quite full as the lunch offer is really good value for money. From $6.95 (plus tax), you can have main course, rice and a bowl of soup.

The main menu offers some of the classics such as Scallion Pancake,  smoked fish, pickeled and preserved vegetables with various dishes but no eels or yellow fish. The food here is best described as Shanghainese Chinese aimed towards the Western Palate. I’ll be generous and call it 90% authentic – unlike Joe’s Shanghainese which is 100% authentic.

I had the stirred fried string beans with chicken, boiled rice and hot and sour soup and a side order of steamed dumplings.

The soup was a bit weak and jellified. It tasted strongly of consommé but did not have enough chillies(hot) or vinegar (sour). The dumplings were steamed pot stickers. This is highly unusual as pot stickers are usually fried or boiled. The dumplings were fine but the thick dumpling skin wasn’t cooked properly in the steamer.

The string beans with chicken were also unusual. Traditionally, the beans are dry cooked in a frying pan with or without minced pork. Here, I had strips of chicken and the dish was coated with a sweetish soy sauce.

So, this place is not quite authentic nor is it fusion. But, at $6.95, you can’t complain.

E

Address: 8-9 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford, OX1 2EW. Between Oxford Town Centre and Railway Station

Telephone number: 01865 202888

Website: N/A

Date of visit: 22 September, 2010

Approximate cost per head: For lunch, you can get away with less than £10. Maybe £20-£30 in the evening depending on what you ordered.

Comments on wine list/beer: Didn’t see a wine list but I assume it exist. Tiger is £3.40 a bottle

Summary:

I went there whilst I was in Oxford because of a great review by Giles Coren in The Times.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/eating_out/giles_coren/article6809248.ece

He mentioned that they had a great Shanghainese Chef and the owner used to own Opium Den on George Street.

Lets get a few non food issues out of the way:

- This place has done well out of the review, it is moving to bigger premises in George Street later this year. There are 2 copies of the review within the restaurant. One on the window facing the street and one on the way to the loo.
- According to Giles, the owner used to own the Opium Den. However, there were several promotional posters (in Chinese) in the restaurant promoting the Opium Den, so may be the links with Opium Den are still there.
- The dark wood furnishing is remarkably similar to the Opium Den.

Now, onto the food. The place advertises Shanghainese and Szechwan cooking as well as Mongolian Grill. The Mongolian Grill is a very large heated griddle. You go to a buffet table, take you selection of shreds of meat, vegetables and noodles. The chef then stir fries it on the griddle for you. The restaurant charges £5.50 for the first plateful and £4 for seconds.

The place was half full when I entered at 1.30. The clientele were mainly Chinese students.

I was offered two menus as I sat down. There was a lunch menu offering dim sum (from £3 a dish) and various rice and noodles for around £6 a dish or bowl. The main menu that promotes set meals, the Mongolian Grill as well as the a la carte dishes.

I have to say that menu was not particularly Shanghainese or Szechwan. In fact I am not aware of an autrhentic Shanghainese restaurant in the UK. Most of the dishes were Cantonese. I then looked at the dim sum menu and they were all standard items – 90% Cantonese. For example, onion cake or pancake is a must menu item in Shanghainese restaurants, another one is eels. They are not on offer here.

I had pork and vegetable dumplings, wok tip dumplings (pot stickers), beef brisket, vegetable spring roll, shanghai dumplings – shao loong pao.

The pork and vegetable dumplings (£3.50) were essentially pao dough pan fried with a mixed minced pork and Chinese cabbage filling. This was fine. The vegetarian spring rolls (£3.00) were as they should be and it was served with a sweet chilli dip.

The wok tip (£3.50) were ok but were covered in sesame seeds – a first for me world wide and I have eaten quite a few of them. The base of the pot stickers could have been crisper. The shao long pao (3.50) had exactly the same filling as the wok tip and no soup or stock inside the dumpling. It’s the soup that makes these dumplings famous. What was also disappointing was that the wok tip and shao loong pao were served with a black vinegar that had no ginger in it. Traditionally these items are served with a slightly sweet vinegar with shreds of ginger in it.

Next came the five spice beef brisket (£8.00). This was cubes of tender beef in a sauce. The dish was served hot. Traditionally this should be served cold in aspic, sliced up like brawn.

With 2 Tiger Beers and service, the bill came to £28.80. Not cheap but not pricy.

My conclusion is that the food is all right but it is not 100% authentic and certainly, the menu is dominated by Cantonese dishes not Shanghainese dishes.

I am off to New York in mid October. I shall certainly visit an authentic shanghainese restaurant.

Giles, may I suggest that you go to Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, New York or Vancouver and try out a proper Shanghainese restaurant. The food is very different from Sojo. There is a shanghainese restaurant in Kuala Lumpur but I do not recommend it. This is not an invitation, so, please don’t send me the bill.

E

PS. So Jo means burning wine, a type of hash spirit in China.

PPS I am sure that you all know that chop suey is an american invention. Did you know that crispy duck is a british bastardisation of the original dish. In China, it is a salty duck deep fried. No pancake, no hoisin sauce.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/aug/09/chinese-food-takeaway-glass-fat

I am glad that some one is looking behind the PR based research.

E

August 2010