I’ve never been to northern China, but with Chinese cinema gradually spreading I’ve built an impression of giant anonymous housing complexes, warrens of neon-lit shophouses and eateries, huge brown rivers snaking through vast plains covered in crops under chilly grey skies. Feels like the kind of place you need simple, heart-warming and flavour-packed starch. Noodle …
I could not stop laughing at the goldfish dumplings. An awful lot of effort had gone into artfully crafting something so beautifully naff. And I just didn’t get the dish either. The little goldfish had minced prawn inside them, which was a bit boring, and were accompanied by a piece of seared foie gras. Why? …
It’s interesting when the major critics disagree over a new restaurant. When they all agree a place is splendid, it’s safe to say that it’s probably splendid. When they all agree a place is dire, it’s probably better to dine elsewhere. But when a couple of them sing high praises and the others damn with …
Oxford seems to have a thing for good, cheap oriental dining. All of the big London critics have snuck out to academia and waxed lyrical about Zheng, SoJo, Oli’s Thai and My Sichuan. So what better to sandwich in between the sketches of Raphael at the Ashmolean and a film at the indie Ultimate Picture …
For me Chinese has always been the ugly duckling of cuisines. It is spoken of as one of the three great originating cuisines of the world; French, Persian and Chinese. But my experiences of Chinese food in Britain have typically ranged from jolly tasty to utterly dire, with no hint of the snowy white swan …