Swish, basement Chinese restaurant in Mayfair from Alan Yau
This underground Chinese restaurant has been open since 2015 and sits on the plush Berkeley Street in the vicinity of Novikov, Nobu and Sexy Fish. This was a lunch on Valentine’s Day to see if it would befit this occasion as prices in the evening would be predictably a tad higher and utterly packed out. Therefore, this lunch option, followed by a night in with wine might actually be a very good option to consider. For this lunch was £30 for 2 courses and £35 for three courses and thankfully proved to be not bad, but certainly no A Wong or even Hakkasan level for lunch. However, it was certainly not bad at the same time and I can see why this venue is popular with its 1930s, basement Shanghai blues design complete with band.
The meal started with a selection of dim sum including har gau, scampi and XO Hakkaido scallop dumpling for the carnivore and the vegetarian selection that included black truffle dumpling, mushroom, daikon and Japanese squash dumpling – all of these were all suitably steamed and pleasing in filling flavours and actually well done.
The mains chosen were Cantonese duck with a warmed orange sauce which was fine albeit with just the quality of the duck being at a set menu standard rather than that you would find at say at the heights of Made in China at the Grand Hyatt in Beijing. Black cod with XO sauce was also ordered and both mains came with noodles and egg fried rice which and pok choi which were done well enough.
A matcha dessert came with raspberries, raspberry shard and curd and was appealing enough as something sweet, although the matcha is quite bitter and has never been my favourite flavour for dessert wherever this is served. The total bill for a two and three-course lunch with three glasses of wine came to £155 which is not cheap, but this is with the hit of £63 alone being the glasses of wine wanted. You could be in and out of here for a lot less but this was not the occasion for that and it would be a lot more if you were to make an evening of it here.
Food Grade: 73%
My hobby-turned-passion began to evolve during my assignments to London where I was fortunate enough to be able to explore all the Michelin starred restaurants in my spare time and as a result, I gradually built up a catalogue of all these venues.
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