Baozi Inn - Chinatown

Baozi Inn

25 Newport Court

London, England

44-20-7287-6877

Baozi is the Chinese word(s) for any steamed filled-bread, that's round in shape. Generally the size of a potato, they can be sweet or savoury, filled with any combination of meat of vegetarian fillings, and vary from a small new-potato in size (xiao long bao, for instance), to mammoth baseballs, filled with meat and vegetables.



Communist placards on the doorway sets the tone for little themed shack.



Propoganda poster reproductions from the 60s.



A sample of the menu.


(New) old copies of the People's Daily, from the 60s. These are actually reproductions printed on newsprint to look authentic. And indeed, they looked just like a back issue would.



Photo of Zhou En Lai, first premier of the new China (in the loo!).



Look at the size of my corn!



A young hero of the People's Liberation Army.



Propoganda posters of a young Mao, sitting with the people. Farmers, workers, all the right sort are represented.



The menu. In Chinese, it actually heralds the place as a commune, rather than the slightly blank name of 'Baozi Inn'.



The menu is actually incredibly varied, and lists only three types of baozi - pork, chicken, or vegetable.



Most of the menu consists of noodles, wonton dishes, and small 'snacks' that are found all the way from Beijing to Shanghai, where ever a street vendor can set down a bucket and a few stools. All utterly delicious, and all impossible to find elsewhere in the tourist-heavy streets of Chinatown.



The place is licensed and serves a very small range of beers by the bottle, for a fairly reasonable £2.50.



Hurray for the Chairman!



I think this was a mungbean-starch noodle dish served cold with a firey broth, with bits of peanut, coriander, spring onion to add flavour and texture.



Mmm, bowel-stoppingly firey.



Dan dan mian: the dish actually comes in (at least) two completely different variations. We had the spicy version with fried minced pork. It can also mean a cold noodle dish served with a peanut sauce, go figure. Dan dan is usually taken to mean the bamboo pole that streent vendors use to carry two big buckets, in moving their wares around.



A traditional breakfast item, this is a savoury serving of unpressed doufu smothered in a savoury sauce that traditionally would be pork, lilly buds, wood ear mushrooms, and herbs. The unpressed bean-curd has a silky and light texture, similar to very very soft egg-white, but with a faint taste of calcium from the coagulant. Most of the flavour comes from the rich, thickened stock/sauce, while the lilly buds and mushrooms add a toothsome crunch.



The waiting staff are efficient and friendly, the prices are good, and the food is glorious. Almost nowhere else in London can you get such authentic Chinese food, especially dishes from the firey regions, such as Sichuan and Beijing. The noodles are filling and delicious, and tingle the tastebuds so much more than the bland offerings normally found in 'Chinese' restaurants.

The damage: two main dishes and a main-ish dish to share for £18.50. A steal!

Hi Sushi - Frith Street

Hi Sushi

40 Frith Street
London, W1D 5LN



Having been recommended to Hi Sushi by C, our friend who has since left London, we went in high hopes of decent sushi in London - something that has so far strangely eluded us.



From the outside, one could observe the diners downstairs through a CCTV link to a big screen in the window. Gimmicky and pointless.



All you can eat sushi... Not such an odd concept, but there's a good reason that restaurants offering it all seem to turn out to dash hopes and expectations.



Copious sushi, sashimi and hot-food options. Too much choice, it seems. Many of the items are definitely not Japanese by provenance.






The dreaded buffet deal. Don't get me wrong, I flock to a buffet like a vulture to a cooling Tibetan, but the deal here sent off deja vu alarms from Ikkyasan, a place I stopped visiting due to its declining quality and its treatment of customers. Basically, the deal is that you can graze once over the limited a la carte (full of starch and fat to fill you) once, then you can choose as much as you like of the sushi and salmon sashimi; the former being artlessly compressed out of leftovers, and the latter being simple and bland.



The trouble began even before we ordered. Having been given a bar table the size of a large envelope by the door, where even extrance and egress would smack me unsuspectingly from behind and let in an arctic draft, our drink order was taken and forgotten. The waitress - a smiling bowing woman possibly with special needs - helpfully ignored us until we started doing aerobic exercises in our corner. Enquring as to what the sushi set and sashimi sets might comprise of, we were told:

"7 fish".
What might those be?
"I'll ask chef... chef is too busy, it's a mixture of different fish".
Thank you, but we would like to know what the fish are.
"I'll go ask"....

Bringing back a different waitress, someone perhaps more senior but no more competent, we were given the 'mixture of different fish' routine all over again. Finally being promised mackeral, salmon, snapper, squid, prawn and seabass nigiri with tuna maki, and a selection of octopus, salmon, tuna, mackeral and snapper as sashimi, we ordered and contented ourselves with a small meal and the promise to leave as soon as reasonably possible. Having already settled in with a caraf of sake, we didn't want to leave without eating. In hindsight, we really should have simply walked out.



Beautiful presentation.



The sashimi platter looked great. Pity the fish was mealy, bland, and anaemic. Slices were thin, and stingy.



Mackeral, salmon, snapper, squid, prawn and seabass nigiri with tuna maki made up our mixed sushi platter. We asked for cucumber rolls to be replaced with tuna, at an extra cost. We should have stuck with cucumber, as the tuna was bland, and rice inedible.



What was incredible was that this 'sushi' restaurant could make mushy, gooey rice, and then have the audacity to serve it, and for such a high price.

The damage: a large sake, sashimi set and sushi set came to £36.50. Definitely not worth the price, or the time wasted.

Noodle Inn - Bayswater

Noodle Inn

106 Queens Way 106
Bayswater
London, W2 3RR



Tucked along the end of Queens Way, we found this promising little eatery that looked fairly new and very promising.


One of the chefs was hand making pasta in the window. A fairly simple gimmick to get the punters interested, but effective. At around 3-4pm the place was still fairly packed, despite the odd hour.



On our way out we also saw the other chef meticulously making little steamed buns in the open-plan kitchen, which was a very welcome sight when compared to the Yo! Sushi school of 'cookery'.



The colourful menu gives a vast selection of noodle soups.



As well as a selection of other northern-style specialities such as bao zi (steamed stuffed buns).



Having consumed most of half a duck and quite a portion of pig earlier, we couldn't face the roast duck noodle soup that I would usually otherwise snap up.



Instead, we chose to share a brisket noodle soup (a mainstay of the colder months).



And a steamer of xiao long bao (soup dumplings).



Essential condiments of soy sauce and chili oil. The oil here wasn't as good as at Gold Mine, but very tasty and reasonably spicy nonetheless.



The noodle soup was incredibly substantial, served in a massive bowl with what seemed like endless broth. The brisket, unfortunately, required longer cooking, and was quite a workout to attempt to consume. The broth was excellent, although I suspect that a small packet lurks somewhere in its ancestry. The noodles, despite being hand pulled, lacked the bite I had hoped. The dough was not worked very hard, and the pulling process relied on slight oiling and copious flouring in each iteration, meaning that the pasta wasn't as thin, nor as elastic, as I would have liked in hand-made noodles.



The dumplings were very well made, but the mince filling tasted slightly old. Perhaps it's the gelatin used in the soup effect, but something didn't quite taste right. The soup effect, though, was excellent, and perhaps on another day this would have been an exemplary dish.



The damage: £13 for a massive serving of noodles and four quite nice dumplings with two servings of tea. Definitely enough for light lunch for two if you're a glutton, or a moderate meal for two if you're not.