Review: Zheng, Oxford

My favourite cuisine of all from our year-long trip around the world was probably Malay, which we tucked into on Penang island and in Singapore. This was before I started the food blog, so you’ll have to check out my travel blog for details! Suffice to say, it’s an amazing riddle of spices and of sweet, sour, spice and salt. If I was making gross comparisons I might say Malay food compares to Thai food like French compares to Italian.

So it really brought back memories to see Char Kuey Teow and Nasi Lemak on the menu at Zheng. Zheng is a fusion Asian restaurant, and that would normally make me run a mile, but this one comes recommended. And I can add my recommendation now.

We ordered a bit of dim sum to appetise us; vegetable dumplings with a pleasing brassica pungency dipped in a tart oriental vinegar, and char sui bun which was verging on being as good as any I enjoyed in Hong Kong. The bun was fluffy as a cloud, the filling sweet and spicy. As Maureen pointed out, these amazing steamed buns (and variations on them) are sold street side throughout all of Eastern Asia, so why do out street snacks in the UK have to be crap like sausage-inna-bun that needs a huge squirt of ketchup to have any flavour?

The main I chose was Nasi Lemak – not a refined dish, but I was on memory lane. Zheng do it beautifully; chicken cooked in a dry spicy paste with plenty of coconut, served with rice, roasted peanuts, and a halved boiled egg. Told you it wasn’t fancy. It was excellent, though. They added a crispy-fried wing to the plate, the batter spicy and the wing juicy.

Maureen ordered a beef rendang, which if you don’t know it is a rich, dark curry dish from Indonesia. This one was packed with flavour. We might have liked more chilli, but again that’s more our expectation from years past. This was lovely.

To go with all this I added a dish of stir-fried shredded potato with Chinese vinegar. This was a new one on me, and the potato was a great carrier for the super-tangy sauce that included absolutely heaps of ginger and garlic along with the vinegar. Great.

Can’t report on the wine – we did what we usually do with any low-budget oriental meal and enjoyed it with Chinese jasmine tea; a very smooth and clean one, I should say. This meant the whole meal came in at £21 per person and immediately becomes our favourite place to eat in Oxford.