Mr Kong, Chinatown

Restaurants in London's Chinatown, indeed in the Chinatowns of most world cities, tend to fall into one of two broad categories. There are those aimed squarely (one might say cynically) at tourists, of the all-you-can-eat buffet and menus-with-pictures variety, and those intended for Chinese diners, where the food is the real deal but gweilo visitors are positively discouraged and any bold enough to cross the threshold receive the frostiest of welcomes.

What a delight then to find that Mr Kong on Lisle Street, the comparatively quieter thoroughfare parallel to Chinatown's pulsing main artery of Gerrard Street, falls into neither category. Venerable travel agents Cox & Kings, who dispatched me to Mr Kong as part of a wider campaign to encourage holidays to China, describe the country as 'vast and varied', and the same could be said of  Mr Kong's almost bewilderingly-long menu. All the dishes familiar to and favoured by western palates are present and correct, but alongside many of the  less familiar, more challenging choices that a Chinese diner would expect and the more intrepid non-Chinese guest might at least like to try.

My dinner date Alyn being a fairly conservative eater, we side-stepped the likes of braised duck's web with fish lips and played things pretty safe with our ordering, starting with soups - crab and sweetcorn flecked with generous chunks of real crabmeat and a blandly soothing shredded duck broth; crunchy spring rolls with a spicy soy dipping sauce; and grilled pork dumplings, whose juicy, peppery filling made up for slightly claggy casings. 

Next came half a roasted Peking duck served with spring onion, cucumber, pancakes and hoi sin sauce, marinaded, the menu explained, 'in vinegar and honey, then inflated to make the skin tasty and crispy'. You're not wrong, Mr Kong; while the flesh was delicious, the caramel glass-hard skin was the highlight, adding exciting savoury crunch to our pancake parcels.

Had we known - or perhaps been warned - how large the main courses were, we would have ordered only one rather than two, the sheer quantity of food which was brought to the table next proving somewhat daunting. Mongolian crispy lamb was an ample mound of meat, first roasted then shredded and deep-fried to crispen the edges. Instead of pancakes, lettuce leaves were provided as wrappers, along with more hoi sin sauce and a tangy dip made of rice wine, vinegar and sugar with slices of chilli.

The best dish of the meal, not to mention the most enormous and most fun, was a hotpot of curry crab with glass noodles from the Chef's Specials menu. A whole baked crab, the shell cracked and cleaved into about eight large pieces, swam in a deep pan of sweet, mild curry laced with fresh chillis, vegetables and short strands of noodles. As I worked my way through it (Alyn having admitted defeat after the lamb), napkin tucked into collar, occasionally rinsing my sauce-soaked digits in the finger bowl, the debonair manager - the eponymous Mr Kong - placed a fatherly hand on my shoulder and advised, "Patience. For this dish you need patience!" I paused for breath, then redoubled my efforts. It was soon all gone.

Unsurprisingly neither of us had any inclination to order or room for dessert, but had we wanted to we could have chosen from a short list of toffee fruit or, as we heard one table of regulars intriguingly requesting, "Those things that look like lychees but aren't lychees". Instead, once the carnage had been cleared from our table, we were brought a dish of refreshing orange wedges and warmed (not to mention, much-needed) cleansing towels. 

Many of Mr Kong's neighbours are notorious for the rudeness of their staff, but again marking out Mr Kong as different from its Chinatown rivals we found the service to be, if not particularly effusive, then at least courteous, efficient and brisk rather than brusque. The dining room was pleasant enough, too; a little overly bright perhaps, and the furniture chosen more for function than form, but warm, comfortable and tasteful nonetheless.

With a couple of soft drinks and tip, our bill came to £69, which felt like excellent value for the quality and - I'll admit excessive - quantity of food consumed. Around us, smiling faces at every table told tales of similarly-satisfied customers.

Other restaurants might be smarter or more specialised; the presentation of their food might be sharper, their ingredients finer. But taken as a whole, it's hard to imagine there being a safer bet in any Chinatown than Mr Kong, a restaurant in a class of its own.

Mr Kong, 21 Lisle Street, London, WC2H 7BA Tel: 020 7437 7341 http://www.mrkongrestaurant.com 







Posted by +Hugh Wright

Mr Wu, Chinatown

'All You Can Eat' are easily my four favourite words in the English language. 'Hugh you look fabulous' and 'Cocktails are on me' come close, but it's the invitation - though I'll admit I tend to interpret it more as a challenge than an offer - to scoff as much as my heart desires that excites me every time.

I've enjoyed some exceptionally good all you can eat affairs; particularly memorable binges include a Champagne brunch at the Marriott, Budapest and a ninety minute breakfast blow-out at The Fullerton in Singapore. But, while I'm hardly a food snob at the best of times, put me within a bain marie's throw of an unlimited buffet and any care about the quality of what's on offer pales next to my delight at the quantity - and it's probably for this reason that I really liked Mr Wu.

Londoners will be familiar with the Wu brand even if, as many do, they abjure it as a cheap, base-quality tourist trap to be avoided at all costs. There's a number of branches dotted around central London operating under a variety of names including Mr Wu, MW and in the case of the Shaftesbury Avenue branch I visited, Little Wu, all offering an all you can eat Chinese buffet for next-to-no-money - £6.50 at this particular outlet. 

Although everything about Wu restaurants is designed to discourage lingering - hard wooden benches, fluorescent lighting that would be rejected as too harsh for Abu Ghraib, overpriced drinks - pay your money and you can stay as long as you like and eat as much as you can of the dozen or so stock Chinese and Oriental dishes on offer.

Now I know what you're thinking; food that cheap, in the West End, has to be terrible, right? Well, not entirely. Sure it's not brilliant quality, and much of it is a nuclear orange colour which screams 'Tartrazine!', but most of the dishes available are no worse than you'd get from an OK-if-not-great takeaway and some of it's even rather moreish. Highlights on my visit were char siu pork and satay chicken on skewers, both genuinely delicious and made with meat and poultry of sufficient quality as to withstand slight - only slight - over-cooking, and some juicy, spicy pork balls.

Everything else - including chow mein, beef in black bean sauce, sweet and sour chicken and 'Thai-style' battered prawns - was fine, albeit that the latter might more accurately have been described as 'discernibly prawn-flavoured battered bullets'. A ladle or two of any of the separate sauces - sweet and sour, sweet chilli and sweet peanut (OK, satay) - elevates any of the dishes from 'edible' to 'rather tasty'. By the time I'd shovelled down two hefty platefuls I was full, happy and satisfied that I'd had more than good value for my £6.50. 

Or rather, my fiance's £6.50; if you're wondering, perhaps incredulously, what I was doing at Little Wu in the first place, the answer is that my lovely man who doesn't earn very much wanted to treat me to a meal for a change and I knew that at a Wu we could eat, drink and tip for less than I'd usually happily spend on a main course.

Is this great food? Of course not, but it's not as bad as snootier critics might have you believe. Is it authentically Chinese? About as much as Christopher Lee playing Fu Manchu. But it's passable, palatable and pretty good value, and when it comes to bargain all you can eat, that, to be honest, is about all you can ask.

Mr Wu, 64 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 6LU and branches. Tel: 020 7437 5088. No website. 

Tokyo Diner, Chinatown

When I decided to start writing this blog and had to come up with a title, I wanted to choose something that was original but not too esoteric and self-explanatory without being trite. Although over time I've found myself wishing that I could have come up with something as brilliant as Thring For Your Supper (now alas soberly renamed 'Oliver Thring') or, my absolute favourite, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Our Bread, I was and remain very satisfied with TwelvePointFivePercent. 


Occasionally when I tell people the name, it takes a few seconds for the penny to drop before they chuckle and say, "Oooh, twelve point five percent service!" but just about everyone gets that I took the title from the pretty-much-ubiquitous 'discretionary' service charge which, with the noble exception of the D&D group, just about everywhere whacks onto your bill these days.

Just about everywhere, that is, except for Tokyo Diner, a groovy little Japanese cafe just off Leicester Square, which not only doesn't add service to your bill, or stamp on your bill in red that service is not included, but actively states on it's menu that it won't take tips. Yes, you read that right, won't take tips.

According to the menu, 'Paying extra for service is a foreign concept. Since Tokyo Diner first opened in 1992, tips have never been expected or accepted. Any money which is mistakenly left on tables goes to St. Martin-in-the-Fields’ unit for the Homeless.' How brilliant is that? 'Mistakenly left on tables' has to be one of the subtlest pieces of cultural snobbery I've ever encountered, as if to say 'Ha! You English people and your crazy insistence on tipping! You get fleeced for twelve point five percent in most places and in the ones that don't, you feel obliged to leave it anyway! FOOLS!' Next time you're in a Japanese restaurant and service is added or the bill's left open, you might want to bear this in mind when deciding what, if anything, to leave.

The no tipping policy isn't the only endearing thing about Tokyo Diner (to which I was taken by my pal Greg when we were in need of sustenance and a stiff drink after seeing Debbie Reynolds' slightly surreal one-woman show on Thursday night). It's light, bright and spotlessly clean, with functional wooden bench seating configured in sociable twos, fours and sixes and set with everything one could possibly need including pots of disposable chopsticks, bottles of good soy and ton katsu sauces and a sprinkler of shichimi seasoning. As soon as you're seated, you're brought complimentary green tea and a little dish of rice crackers to graze on while choosing your food. Staff - almost all Japanese, for reasons explained on the quirky website - are enthusiastic, polite and humorous, evidently taking both pleasure and pride in what they're doing.

The menu offers a familiar selection of curries, noodle soups, bento boxes and sushi, all at super-reasonable prices. Should you be feeling particularly hungry (and we were - sitting through two hours of Carrie Fisher anecdotes works up one hell of an appetite), extra rice is offered with any dish completely free of charge - but 'please don't waste it' the menu exhorts. Another example of the restaurant's iron-clad social conscience is that there's no tuna on the menu, and there won't be until Tokyo Diner finds 'a trustworthy sustainable source'. Fortunately neither of us had our heart set on tuna that night and both went for a bento box, Greg's vegetarian, mine ton katsu.

Each was very good, and abundant, Greg's vegetarian option substituting a generous helping of stir-fried mixed vegetables for the crispy-coated pork fillet in mine. Other components were interesting and delicious; as well as a mound of rice we enjoyed pickles, a refreshing, sharp wakame salad, braised aubergine, some butter-soft salmon sashimi in mine and veggie California rolls in Greg's. The resulting whole was, as a good bento box should be, a substantial, balanced meal of complementary flavours and textures, which we both thoroughly enjoyed. Our enjoyment was further enhanced by a bottle of the house white wine, a very drinkable Vin de Pays du Comte Tolosan, strong in Sauvignon Blanc flavour and an incredible bargain at just £6.90. The mark-up on that can't be more than about a token 25% which just makes me like the people behind Tokyo Diner even more.

The bill, for food, that great value wine and absolutely not one single percent service, came to just sixteen quid each and could have been even less if we'd not been so badly in need of liquor. Tokyo Diner shoots right to the top of my list of favourite casual/cheap-eats options; instead of leaving a tip they ask that you 'Please come back and bring your friends' and it's a certainty that I will. I just hope that the no tipping policy doesn't catch on too widely, else I may find myself once again racking my meagre brains for a new blog title.

Tokyo Diner, 2 Newport Place, London WC2H 7JJ Tel:020 7287 8777 http://www.tokyodiner.com 

 

Ikkyusan

Gerrard Street, the colourful, noisy thoroughfare which runs the entire length of London's Chinatown, is known and feared in equal measure for its intense concentration of Chinese restaurants, ranging from the deeply authentic to the shamelessly touristy and the cheap 'n' cheerful to painfully pricey. Every Londoner has their favourite (mine's Imperial China, FYI), recommended to friends and tourists with a knowing wink and a tap of the nose to underline how privileged this information is, a falsehood exposed the minute they arrive to find that every table is occupied by diners sent there by someone similarly in the know. Some of the places on the strip have been in business for decades, and alluring tales - probably apocryphal - of outrageously rude service, and secret menus featuring 'proper' Chinese food, only given out on request, ensure that the restaurant industry in this part of town will ride out every economic twist and downturn. What might come as a surprise is that in addition to the dizzying array of Chinese eateries, there's also a smattering of food joints of other origins, and it was to one of these - Japanese, Thai and dim sum specialist Ikkyusan - that my banker pal Patsy took me for dinner last night.

It's a very nice space, a cut above what one might expect in this area; the long ground-floor room is decked out izakaya style with lots of foliage and subtle lighting complementing dark tiling and walls, while upstairs there's an authentic ryokan-style dining room with tatami matting and low-level tables for cross-legged eating. Pats and I being rather larger of frame than your typical Japanese gentlemen went for the western option, and ate downstairs at a traditional table more suited to our heights.

The menu - which in common with even some fairly high-end Oriental places features pictures of the food, rather to my chagrin - is diverse but not to the point of being overwhelming. There's a good choice of sushi and sashimi (prepared before your very eyes at an open sashimi bar at the front of the restaurant), dim sum all day, noodle soups every which way you could possibly wish for and a long list of bento box options. It's from this latter that Patsy and I both chose the delicious sounding Surf 'n' Turf bento, promising tempura prawns and teriyaki beef in addition to the usual white rice, miso soup, salad and pickles for a very reasonable £12.50.

We certainly weren't disappointed; our boxes were huge and made up of excellent component parts. The steak used in the teriyaki was perfectly tender, and the tempura included a generous serving of giant prawns in a light, crackling batter just as it should be. There were some pieces of vegetable tempura added to the mix - a very welcome extra - and the rice and miso were both of good quality. My only minor gripe was that the salad was a bit boring, just lettuce, carrot and sweetcorn rather than the more usual combination of mixed leaves and radish say, but the rest of the box made up for this slight flaw by being so good.

We washed everything down with a bottle of house white - I didn't note the name but recall that it was Italian, dry, not in the least unpleasant and about twelve quid - but could have chosen from a better selection of beers, juices, soft drinks and sakes than I've seen in many other pan-Oriental joints. Our bill for bento boxes, a bottle of wine plus an extra glass for Pats and 12.5% service came to just over £20 a head, which felt about right.

With further research it transpires that Ikkyusan is part of the ever-expanding and well-respected Hi Sushi group of restaurants, which rather explains the better-than-average quality (that said, I was massively underwhelmed at the launch of their recent Covent Garden outpost Hi Sushi Izakaya, so they don't get everything right). Purely because I tend only to go through Chinatown on my way to or from Soho, rather than as a destination in itself, I don't think I'll necessarily be back at Ikkyusan any time soon, but that's certainly not to say that I wouldn't recommend it. In fact, next time you're asked by someone for your insider-knowledge recommendation of where to eat in Chinatown, I'd encourage you to surprise them with your contrariness and send them here.

Ikkyusan, 39 Gerrard Street, London W1D 5QD Tel: 020 7434 0899 http://www.ikkyusan.co.uk/