Yauatcha

After a Saturday night out in London, and staying with an old childhood friend, we were all craving yum cha as a cure to our over-exertion the night before. As the friend is returning to Australia soon, a treat at Yauatcha seemed like a great idea.

Having read rave reviews, and suitably impressed by the Michelin star, we certainly had high expectations for the meal ahead. Ringing in a booking was no problem, despite giving them only an hour's notice of our imminent arrival. The phone service was automated with several different options, landing you finally on an operator who confirms the booking.

To my consternation, and ominously rumbling stomach, the ladies dilly dallied as only ladies can. We finally presented ourselves at Yauatcha at 3pm, two hours later than our booking. Having called ahead, we were told that this wouldn't be a problem, and that there would be a table for us. Curious. I was under the impression that Yauatcha tables were constantly overbooked, and that the 90 minute time limit was to increase turnover and prevent the hungry hordes from breaking down the gates and stringing up the maître d'.

A slick and elegantly dressed maître d', looking relaxed rather than beleaguered, showed us downstairs to the much lauded dining room. The place was decidedly empty, with a few families dotted around, and various couples and quads seated at the unsually decorated sofa/diner style tables. The decor is... definitely not like any other Chinese restaurant. Perhaps it is the late hour for yum cha, but I'd expected the place to be far more vibrant. The small number of people certainly outdid themselves in volumn. Even in the half-empty restaurant we had to speak at the tops of our voices to be heard.

Now, this might be quite racist. In fact, it is quite racist; I don't care. I have an innate mistrust of non-asian waiting staff in asian restaurants. That's not to say that a non-asian cannot perform his or her duty; in fact, they are probably more polite, accurate and pleasant than their asian counterparts tend to be. But can I trust them to recommend a house special dim sum that the average person from Hong Kong would love? Can they be trusted to know the difference between really good tripe-in-bbq-sauce and phenomenal tripe-in-bbq-sauce? If I pronounce the Chinese words in Chinese, will s/he understand? or will I have to put on a mock-British music-hall Chinese accent just to place my order? In any case, many if not most of the waiting staff were European, but they seemed well trained to take orders from the not-terribly-vast menu.

Beginning with a gorgeous and warming cup of Tsui Yu, we preused the elegantly designed menus. Then, the problems began.

Firstly, a nearby table of mother and children were creating quite a mess. A dropped mound of some sort of noodle dish rested tranquilly on the floor beside their table, in full view of the surrounding diners and, presumably, the floor staff, with nary a waiter to disturb it. Seeing food artistically decorating the floor wasn't wetting my appetite.

The second problem was waving down somebody to take our order. While bad service is part of an authentic yum cha experience, I hadn't counted on a Michelin starred restaurant to require me to take on the persona of an air traffic controller. Finally, launching myself at a passing waiter with a rugby tackle, we were assured that somebody would be with us shortly.

The food was, well, excellent. Everything tasted very fresh, which, and it is sad to say, can be quite uncommon even for busy and recommended Chinese restaurants. Churning out hundreds of orders of sui mai can lead to rather jaded chefs paying no close attention to their wares. This certainly wasn't the case with what we ordered, and the yum cha staples of ha gau (prawn dumplings) and sui mai (pork dumplings) were both piping hot, plump, juicy, and oh-so-tasty. The sticky rice in lotus leaf was fine, with the correct ingredients cooked highly competently, but the serving size was quite small, and rather than a plump package was a little on the thin side. Shanghai xiao long bao (soup dumplings) were very good, but Michelin level? no more so than Imperial China, or a slew of other restaurants, we thought. A train of other dishes followed, all very well done with fresh ingredients: the prawn cheung fen (steamed velvety starch sheets rolled with prawns in a light sweet-soy sauce) being particularly good because of the freshness of the prawns; chicken taro croquettes being light and puffy, disappearing on the tongue and leaving no more than a creamy tasty memory, and so on. A highlight was the feng zhao (chicken feet stewed in a sweet-bbq sauce), which was gelatinous as it should be but not over cooked, very flavoursome and piping hot.

Veering slightly off the beaten path, we also tried the shiitake and duck roll: interesting, but not great, it lacked a depth of flavour that was expected of shiitaki and duck, and was chewier than I associate with dim sum dishes.

The crowning dish was the salt and pepper quail. The magnificence of the quail was almost not-to-be, as the racist worries from earlier reared their ugly heads. After our efficient but cold Polish waiter took our orders, he paid us nary a glance, relying on other staff (do they have dedicated servers?) to bring our orders. This shouldn't present a problem, but the servers did not announce the dishes and this left us to identify some of the more exotic plates for ourselves, and also to guess what has yet to come. Was that the bean curd with enoki and cloud ears? or was it the shiitaki and duck? Which dumpling is this? Finally after counting our orders and coming up one short, we arrived at the rather anticipated salt and pepper quail, which we were sure had yet to grace our table. Much waving at passing penguins finally resulted in one of our servers checking up on our table.

"Salt and pepper squid?", he asks, "I'll find out for you". "Oh, no, you didn't order the squid? let me find out." Proudly returning with a plate of cephalopod held aloft, he presented the dish with a flourish. "Not what you ordered? that's ok, I brought it for you, I will add it to the bill". With only slight wailing and gnashing of teeth, the squid was sent back. Our erstwhile Polish waiter was summoned by the server, and a frantic but hushed discussion ensued in the corner of the restaurant. The squid finally disappears into the kitchen, but only briefly. 5 minutes later it reappears making its way determinedly towards our table, this time intercepted midstride by our Polish waiter and again abruptly turned 180 degrees. By now we were becoming bored, the table having been devoid of food for some time and it looked like we were being told it is time to leave. No quail, but the confused server who first tried to order squid for us helpfully asks if he can clear the table. Tensions are high, and we resist the temptation to pin his hand to the table with chopsticks.

Finally, the quail is delivered, and it was well worth the wait. Quite possibly the most interesting dish (oh we love dim sum classics, but this was innovative and exciting), the four boneless birds were quick-fried in a light tempura-like batter until a very crisp coating has been achieved, but with deliciously juicy flesh; the quail were then doused in a slightly sweet-sour and peppery sauce. Finger licking good. If any fault, and I'm not saying that there was, it did flatline my palate, despite attempted rescue with tea. Luckily, being the last dish to arrive this presented no culinary problems, but if the kitchen/floor had been more attentive in the first place, then I can't imagine eating other dishes after this.

Getting the bill proved to be another rendition of 'bringing in an Airbus to land', and the damage was around £65 for three, for 8-9 dishes and tea.

Good food, modern decor, poor service and just a bit too pricey to be either regular, or to highly recommend. It's well worth the experience, but don't expect a mindblowing experience.

Yum Cha (and the art of eating Dim Sum)

Yum cha, dim sum, and other difficult but tasty Chinese words.

Yum cha, or its alter-ego in the UK - Dim Sum - is one of those things close to my heart. When I was younger, Saturdays would, if we had been very good, be a treat to yum cha down at the biggest Chinese place in town. During my formative university years, many a Sunday morning was spent nursing a hangover with copious amounts of hot tea, washing down delicious little steamed or fried morsels.

For clarification, Yum cha (飲茶) is the consumption of little snacks in the morning, with the consumption of tea. It means, literally, to drink tea. Dim Sum (點心) are the little snacks that one consumes at yum cha. These two words are both Cantonese transliterations, and indeed the practice of yum cha doesn't really exist in the North of China, where, 點心 (pronounced dian xin) would mean little pastries of various kinds, almost certainly sweet.

I've always been ambivalent about the rise in public awareness of yum cha in the west. It was certainly a demonstration that Chinese food could be refined in its presentation, fun in its consumption, and utterly delicious in its delicate execution. It was an exemplification that Chinese food needn't be overly sweet and greasy, messy, and served in a heaping mound over fried noodles.

On the flip side, too many Dim Sum joints opened up, serving sub-standard fast food and giving a delicious cuisine a undeserved bad name. Take the Ping Pong chain in London, for example. Yum cha is a time for people to sit over pots of tea, eat, drink, chat and relax for hours on a lazy weekend. Time to catch up on the gossip, and enjoy life. Sitting down at a formica table to have pre-made, pre-frozen, pre-cooked balls of rubber at the fastest rate you can, to be assured of low overheads and high turnover is the antithesis to this style of eating.

Another trend to have hit the metropolises is the ultra-hip, and ultra-expensive yum cha restaurant, finding a niche to extort a few extra pounds per dish out of fashionable diners and curious foodies. All credit to Yauatcha, that they do fantastic, innovative, and above all, approachable food. The problem I have is that it becomes 'fine dining', whatever that means, and loses its roots as a venue for family and friends to gather, relax, make some noise, and enjoy their food. If you walk into a restaurant in Hong Kong, the first thing that hits you is not the wall of steam, or the enticing fragrance of the dozens of competing dishes trolleyed around by staff, who are part waiter and part riot-police. It is usually the sheer noise of the place, reminiscent of underground gambling dens, and comparable, possibly, only to a beer hall in Munich during Oktoberfest.

Please take the time to try a few different establishments. To go to Yauatcha or - the other extreme - to go to Ping Pong, and then declare that you have sampled dim sum and not seen the point is somewhat akin to having walked into the nearest Angus Steak House, and decided that steak really isn't for you. There is so much more out there. Take a knowledgeable friend along, and go!

A short glossary of dim sum terms:

har gau (虾饺) - a small steamed dumpling with a wrapper made from wheat starch, wrapped around a prawn filling.

siu mai - a steamed open-faced dumpling made with a wheat wrapped around chopped pork and prawns, often bound by a small amount of starch.

feng zhao - chicken's feet, served in several different styles - usually fried until crispy then steamed with black beans and a bbq style sauce, usually resulting in a gooey gelatinous texture much prized in asian cuisine.

lo bak koh (萝卜糕) - AKA 'lo bah gao', or any variety of spellings, is a pan fried block made from grated white radish, starch and various savoury bits including dried shrimp, Chinese bacon, Chinese sausage, shiitaki mushrooms etc, which is then steamed to form a solid. Slices are then individually panfried.