The Times Magazine 61you happen to be – it’s very convenient if
you’re heading out from Hampstead to the
Cotswolds, for example.
I had to go round the roundabout a few
times to find the slip road, but once inside the
restaurant it was completely empty, which
meant I got a table in the window for a
hubcap-level view of articulated lorries
causing mayhem as they realised, too late, that
they were in the wrong lane for the A40. And
the front door didn’t shut properly either, so
I could smell them too.
Indoors, the chairs and tables were red,
the walls white with polystyrene brick-effect
cladding, there was a fish tank, fairy lights
over the bar, big polythene bags of (delicious)
prawn crackers in boxes piled up on one wall
and a very nice waitress, who brought me a
bag of those crackers and then a bowl of dan
dan noodles full of ground pork and chilli,
which were exceedingly rich when turned over
in the generous sludge of sesame paste at the
bottom of the dish.
Then came a big plate of decent stirfried
lotus root with thickly sliced garlic and spring
onion and I was just beginning to think, “My
readers will be okay with this – I can definitely
send them out here,” when it all went pear-
shaped. For, alas, the much touted Fujian pork
soup looked and smelt like a blocked toilet.
Truly, something had gone very wrong there.
This was not a failure of mine to grasp how a
dish outside my own eating culture should be.
I have eaten a lot of Fujian pork soup. This
was just a minger in its class. I had to move it
to the edge of the table to even breathe and
within five minutes the “soup” had set solid.
Just as bad, sadly, were the salted egg yolk
prawns which had been coated in egg powder
and fried, unaccountably, with their shells still
on. It was like eating a sparrow rolled in cat
litter. I’d have washed my mouth out with
fizzy water, but they were fresh out, so I used
a glass of tap to clear the dryness, paid my
bill, asked for a doggy bag to avoid looking
ungrateful, which I dropped in a bin round the
corner, and headed home via Hoo Hing at
Park Royal with a 1,000-pack of frozen har
gao to make the trip worthwhile.
So don’t head out that way, please, until I’ve
found you something better. In the meantime,
if it’s Chinese from slightly outside the Anglo-
Cantonese mainstream that you crave, head
to – boring, I know – Soho, for a crack at
something somewhat epochal, called Chuan.
Chuan is epochal, for me at least, because
it is a first incursion into Chinatown for the
Royal China group of restaurants that, a
quarter of a century ago, first dragged me out
of Chinatown, where I not only ate all my
Chinese food back then but also, briefly, lived,
for Chinese food. In the middle 1990s, I got
my dim sum from the trolleys at Chuen Cheng
Ku: thickish but very savoury dumplings, squid
and snails in curry sauce, turnip cake, congee,
chicken’s feet, all at its best if you got a table
by one of the kitchen doors and ate it before it
had been around the room a couple of times.So the arrival of Royal China in Bayswater
in 1996 was a revelation to me: sleek, beautiful
dishes, precise steaming, crisp frying, fancy
crockery... then one opened a bit nearer to my
home, on Baker Street, and then even nearer,
up Finchley Road, on the site of what had
before that been the Lord’s Rendezvous
Chinese restaurant, an Angus Steakhouse
and, once upon a time, Lord’s Underground
station. But that closed ten or more years ago
and now, sadly, the Bayswater one has gone
too, a casualty of the pandemic and some
bum landlordery.
But no time for tears, for RC has responded
with a spectacular coals-to-Newcastle foray
into Gerrard Street, Chinatown’s gaudy main
drag and home to a number of places that are
not nearly as terrible as they used to be, many
of them with a Sichuanese direction, which is
where, cunningly, RC has decided to follow.
So as well as all the Cantonese standards- the famous dim sum, immaculate roasting
and fancy fish-driven main courses that its
customers have grown to love – Chuan is
doing sliced beef and ox tripe in Sichuan sauce,
steamed chicken feet and marinated duck’s
tongue (£18.80 for a selection of all three),
all beautifully presented and alive with the
mouth-numbing fire of Sichuan peppercorns.
The Sichuan-style double-cooked Iberian
pork fillet is an utter triumph, as are the dried
beef with pickled pepper and the Sichuan
braised beef brisket, but portions are
gargantuan and capacious doggy bags (this
time not to be thrown away) are de rigueur.
While the website shows fancy dining
rooms in the back, I have eaten (probably
six times now, always alone) only in the front
where, along with the rougher-edged (but
excellent) Sichuan cooking, I have been
tickled to note a more “Chinatowny” approach
to restauration. Street doors are left open, the
scent of crafty midcourse fags wafts in from
time to time, mops in buckets lean against
walls in the corridor, deliveries rattle violently
through the room, service is brisker, but the
habitual kindness and competence is always
there, along with the tinkly jazz music, and
after a slow start post-lockdown, the turnover
at lunchtime is impressive, with a 50-50
Chinese/European split of clientele hustling in
and out with bags full of shopping and local
groceries, honking the great food down over a
distracted phone scroll and scarpering. I dare
say there is a slower, more elegant process at
suppertime, but I wouldn’t know. I’m long
back up the North Circular by then. n
Chuan
30 Gerrard Street,
London W1 (020
7734 1388; chuan-
royalchina.co.uk)
Cooking 8
Service 8
Vibes 8
Score 8
Price I usually
spend about £45
on a boozeless
solo lunch. Sniff.