Celebrating Mooncake Festival at Royal China Queensway

Words and Photography by Caroline Ghera and Luiz Hara

Name: Royal China Queensway

Where: 13 Queensway, London W2 4QJ, http://www.rcguk.co.uk

Cost: The à la carte menu at Royal China Queensway contains a comprehensive variety of appetizers priced £5.50 - £9.20 while most main courses range from £10 - £26.50, with vegetables, noodles and rice dishes varying between £3 - £11. However, a few signature and seafood dishes can climb up to £45. The dim sum menu, which is served daily up to 5pm, features an excellent choice of dumplings, cheung fun, rice and noodle dishes ranging from £3.30 to £10.20.

Royal China Queensway also serves a good selection of cocktails, Chinese teas and soft drinks. The wine list is very reasonably priced with a 175ml glass ranging from £5.80 to £6.95 and most bottles priced  £19 - £45. 

About: Founded in 1996, Royal China Queensway was the first of what is now a very successful group of 6 restaurants in and around London. Widely regarded for its traditional dim sum creations and great Cantonese cooking and with branches in Baker Street (Royal China Club reviewed here and Royal China Baker Street reviewed here), Canary Wharf, Fulham and Harrow, the Queensway site remains the flagship of the group (reviewed here), always buzzing with members of the Chinese community, locals and food enthusiasts from further afield.

The restaurant has a spacious, elegant interior decorated in black and gold which during the month of September is further embellished with lanterns hanging from the ceiling to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival also known as Moon (or Mooncake) Festival, this year celebrated on the 27th September 2015.

What We Ate: Over the years, I have been to Royal China Queensway on countless occasions to savour their afternoon dim sum which I consider one of the best in London, but my latest visit was on a weekday evening when the à la carte menu is available. We started our meal with the deep fried soft shell crab with spicy salt (£8.50 for a portion of two). The fleshy soft shell crab was coated in a crisp thin layer of batter and topped with salty flakes of garlic, chilli, ginger and spring onion which provided a delicious contrast of textures.

To follow, we tried the deep fried baby squid with spicy salt (£6.80). Prepared in the same fashion as the crab (we were in the mood for some deep-frying that night), it was perfectly cooked and equally delicious.

Moving on to the main courses, I could not help ordering one of my favourite Royal China specialities, the baked seafood rice with creamy Portuguese sauce (£12.00). The exact ingredients are carefully guarded by the chef but this is a delightful dish of egg-fried rice with generous pieces of fish, scallops and whole tiger prawns topped with a creamy béchamel-like coconut and evaporated milk sauce, delicately flavoured with what might be a light curry or even semolina. This is a dish only available at Queensway and it is sadly not included in their printed menu so if you would like to try it, please ask your waiter for it.

From the Chef’s specials we opted for the pan-fried stuffed aubergine with minced shrimp paste and black bean sauce (£11.20). A traditional Cantonese dish sometimes served with stuffed tofu and peppers, these were wonderfully soft aubergine pockets filled with a generous layer of shrimp paste, another excellent dish.

In order to add a bit of spice to our meal we ordered the sautéed prawns with red chilli sauce “Szechuan Style” (£13.50). This dish was however disappointing - the fleshy prawns were let down by a gloopy and sweet sauce that lacked any heat or depth of flavour usually the trademarks of Szechuanese cooking.

Our last meat-based dish was the chicken with chilli in “Chiu Chow style or Teochew Style” (£10.80). These were stir-fried strips of chicken breast with red and yellow peppers, chillies and sesame seeds. Chiuchow or Teochew cuisine, from Guangdong Province is well known for its seafood dishes, braised pickles and light flavouring and freshness of ingredients.

To accompany our main dishes we had stir-fried choi sum with garlic (£9.80). The crunchy green stems were delicious and added some lightness and freshness to our meal.

To wrap up, we shared some seasonal mooncakes, a delicacy gifted between family and friends to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival, a Chinese holiday dedicated to viewing the moon at its fullest and brightest at this time of the year. Royal China Queensway will be serving these beautiful treats decorated with symbols of prosperity and friendship during the whole of September. Our first mooncake was made of a thin layer of reddish-brown pastry encasing a deliciously sweet and dense lotus seed paste filling. A whole salted egg yolk is placed in its centre to symbolise the moon. The cake is rich and you will only need a small wedge to savour with tea (£4.00 for 2 types of cakes).

Our second mooncake was a smaller version made with a white crumbly pastry filled with egg yolk custard. If we weren’t so full already we could have eaten a few of these!

What We Drank: Our choice was a bottle of Domaine Rene Monnier, Bourgogne Chardonnay, 2013 (£26.00) which was a rich and rounded wine with a lovely hint of vanilla and a touch of acidity on the finish – a fine chardonnay at its price.

Likes: The delectable soft-shell crab with salty and spicy flakes was a dish I would happily order again, as well as the baked seafood rice with Portuguese sauce which is an perennial favourite and worthwhile asking for despite it not being on the menu. The mooncakes were rich but a perfect afternoon treat or dessert with a lighter meal. Good wine selection and very well priced. Excellent dim sum.

Dislikes: The service at Royal China Queensway is efficient but can be less than friendly at times, which is a pity for a restaurant of this quality. The prawns with red chilli sauce were sweet, lacking in heat and not representative of Szechuan cuisine.

Verdict: The Royal China has been one of my favourite Chinese restaurants in London since its opening in 1996, and continues to be so nearly 20 years later. London restaurants come and go, but over the years, Royal China has been consistently reliable in what they offer – great dim sum and Cantonese fare. Recommended.

London Restaurant Reviews - Kiasu

**THIS RESTAURANT HAS CLOSED DOWN**

Kiasu **Please read commentaries**

Having spent some time discovering the fantastic Nyonya food in Mallaca and Singapore, and then the Hokkien street hawker fare in KL which was equally good, I was thrilled to rediscover some of those amazing flavours at Malaysian restaurants across London including Rasa Sayang, Sedap and more recently Kiasu.

Kiasu had been on my radar for a while, nearing the top of my ever growing hit-list of London restaurants when I got an invitation to the launch of the “Malaysian Kitchen Dining Card Scheme” at Kiasu.

The dining card is part of the 2010 Malaysian Kitchen Campaign, a Malaysian Government initiative that aims to promote its native cuisine to the UK and for which Rick Stein is now the official ambassador.

A number of restaurants across the UK are taking part in this scheme which allows card holders to receive a minimum discount of 20% off the total food bill when dining at one of the participating restaurants. The membership to the scheme is absolutely free, and is valid until 31 December 2010. You can sign up for your free membership via this link (here).

The restaurant is small, very simply furnished, and can be quite noisy at times. The lighting in Kiasu is bright and blue, and the overall ambience is not one to encourage a long and relaxing meal. The restaurant owner, Ronald Lim, who also runs the Cantonese restaurant Kam Tom on the other side of the road, is of Malaysian Peranakan descent, and is said to be an avid foodie.

We were served a selection of starters which included “Malay chicken and beef” satay, both @ £4.50 (4 skewers). I never order satay skewers in London restaurants as I cannot stand jarred sauces. Kiasu’s however tasted fresh and delicious, and had a perfect balance between coconut, peanuts and chilli paste, the main ingredients.

Elizabeth, the manager, told us that the chefs at Kiasu will prepare all sauces in-house every other day, and any unused sauces are disposed of to ensure freshness. This makes sense as homemade sauces, which contain no preservatives, have a much shorter shelf life than their jar equivalents.

Kiasu’s own “Special fried calamari” @ £4.50 was coated in a very light batter, it was perfectly cooked and tender.

I also enjoyed the “Ngoh hiang” @ £4.50, a Hokkien dish of minced pork and prawns, chestnuts, and finely chopped onions, seasoned with five spice powder and soya sauce. The mixture is rolled into bean curd sheets and deep fried. This dish took me right back to the street hawker stalls of Kuala Lumpur and tasted as good as the ones I remember having there.

The “chai tow kway” @ £5.50 was again excellent – the combination of rice cake, shredded daikon (white radish) and dried shrimps fried in egg is a winning one, and Kiasu’s version was no exception.

Most impressive however was the “Kueh pai tee” (top hats) @ £4.50, gorgeous Nyonya hors d’oeuvres, made of thin, crisp and delicate pastry shaped like top hats, filled with julienned vegetables and prawns.

I remember being rather shocked to learn at a cookery class in Singapore (Cookery Magic School run by the lovely Ruqxana) that one of the main ingredients in “Chilli crab” sauce was tomato ketchup. I cannot imagine using it in anything else apart from “Chilli Crab” @ £14.80 (whole crab) - the combination of flavours somehow works, and the ketchup comes into place with the other ingredients including ginger, red chillies and palm sugar.

Noteworthy was also Kiasu’s authenticity by serving their chilli crab with “mantou”, a sweet and soft roll with a deliciously crisp deep fried shell that is used to mop up the rich, thick sauce.

The “Hainanese chicken rice” @ £8.50 was also delicious. The chicken had been cooked in water flavoured with garlic and ginger, and as customary, some of this broth was served as an accompanying soup with the rest being used to cook the rice.

“Char kway teow” @ £6.90, another hawker stall favourite, had been wok-fried at high heat, so the flat rice noodles were beautifully charred. I could also taste a hint of “belacan” (Malay shrimp paste) among the other ingredients.

The “Nonya laksa” @ £6.80, a curried laksa, had a rich coconut base, juicy prawns and fish cake. It was deliciously aromatic due to the daun kesum (also known as Vietnamese mint – rau ram) which gave just the right amount of heat.

The “Honey glazed ribs” @ £6.90 were meaty, deep fried and coated in a honey flavoured sauce.

For dessert we had “Chendol” @ £2.80, a very refreshing dessert made of shaved ice with droplets of fragrant pandan green jelly and coconut milk, laced with thick coconut palm syrup.

The wine list is very reasonably priced (bottles cost between £11 and £35) with most bottles below the £20 mark. Beers, Tiger and Tsingtao, are both priced at £2.80.

We also had “Durian ice cream” @ £1 (per scoop) which I found to be creamy and not too sweet. The flavour of durian was intense but fresh and, unlike some of my dinner companions, I thoroughly enjoyed it - Somerset Maugham's aphorism that eating durian was like savouring a raspberry blancmange while sitting on the lavatory sprang to mind.

Cost: this was a complimentary meal but I have quoted prices of all dishes whenever these were available. I estimate that a three course meal would cost in the region of £15 per person for a three course meal.

Likes: excellent and authentic Malaysian cuisine, homemade sauces, very reasonably priced menu.

Dislikes: restaurant can get rather noisy and the blue neon style lights do not make for the most relaxing atmosphere.

Verdict: One of the best Malaysian restaurants that I have visited in London, Kiasu is authentic, reasonably priced and serves excellent Malaysian and Nyonya dishes. Elizabeth, the manager, showed great knowledge and passion for her cuisine. I cannot wait to return. Highly recommended.

Seeking the Best Dim Sum in London - Royal China @ Queensway

Royal China @ Queensway

I have been coming to Royal China (RC) for the last 12 years, and have nearly always enjoyed my dim sum there. My preferred branch is their flagship restaurant on Queensway, and the only place where I can have one of my most loved dim sum dishes “Baked Seafood Rice in Creamy Portuguese Sauce”. 

Hakkasan is another favourite dim sum joint, however I find myself going less frequently to the West End as the years go by. Dim sum at Hakkasan is a completely different ball game (just as good but in a different way), and about 50% dearer.

I went to Royal China last Sunday on 27^th December 09 and was a bit surprised to find the place with no queue at 1pm. On the one hand, I was pleased that I would not have to wait for a table (RC does not take bookings for dim sum at weekends), but on the other, I felt that it lacked the crazy and vibrant atmosphere seen at the weekends. 

Staff were also rather uninterested, looking tired and sometimes being almost brusque. I was surprised to experience this considering RC charges 12.5% for service charges, and the level of service is usually good. 

 

 

Royal China’s black and gold décor is surprisingly elegant. Despite the lack of windows, the Queensway branch does not feel oppressive but comfortable and roomy.

The most successful dim sum dishes we ordered were:

“Prawn & Chive Dumplings” @ £3.15 – these were as good as ever with the rice wrapper being silken and very delicate and the chives filling delicious.

 

“Pork and Radish Dumplings” @ £2.65 – I love white radish (daikon), and the addition of peanuts makes this one of my favourite dumplings.

“Glutinous Rice in Lotus Leaf” @ £3.50 – with a delicious filling of chicken and mushrooms, encased in sticky rice, and wrapped up in lotus leaves, this steamed dim sum is stodgy but well flavoured.

 

“Royal China Cheung Fun” @ £3.60 – I normally order the prawn version but as a friend wanted to try the beef cheung fun, we opted for this dish which contains one of each, prawn, beef and char siu pork. As usual, the cheung fun wrapper was delicate, silken and contrasted beautifully with the meaty fillings.

“Ho Fun Noodles with Pork and Enoki Mushrooms” @ £8 – I hardly ever have noodles with my dim sum, however I was glad that we order it. It was an excellent dish and accompanied our other dim sum choices well.

“Baked Seafood Rice with Creamy Portuguese Sauce” @ £9.60 – I haven’t yet discovered what this yellow creamy sauce is made from but it is utterly scrumptious, to the point that I dream about it. Meaty scallops, prawns, squid and fish are mixed with egg fried rice and topped with the creamy Portuguese sauce. A “must” on any visits to RC Queensway.

The less successful dim sum dishes we ordered were:

“Prawn & Coriander Dumpling” @ £2.65 – the rice wrapper was unusually thick on this occasion and I struggled to taste any coriander in the dumpling. 

“Roast Pork Bun” @ £2.65 – I love this and, as with Cheung Fun and Seafood Rice, order them on every visit. This time, the dumplings had considerably shrunk in size and the char siu pork filling was rather ungenerous.

“Yam Paste & Pork Dumplings” @ £2.65 – I ordered this in error (I had meant to order the pan fried turnip paste with dried meats which is sensational) and unluckily they were rather greasy and nothing special.

“Fried Mixed Meat Dumpling” @ £2.65 – again this was slightly greasy and lacking in filling. I struggle to find anything positive to comment on this one.

“Roast Pork Puff” @ £2.65 - I normally enjoy these triangular beauties similar to Brazilian & Portuguese snacks, but unfortunately this was another disappointing choice as the puffs were served stone cold and tasted a bit tired.

I normally come out of RC feeling really pleased with the food and overall experience. I have to admit that on this occasion, I was disappointed as some of the dishes were not as good as previously and the staff had a tired and unfriendly look about them. 

I still enjoyed the Baked Seafood Rice, the Cheung Fun and a couple of other steamed dumplings though so I hope that coming 2010, RC will pick up again and standards will go back to where they were.

The total bill came to £74.40 including service and Chinese tea for 4 people @ £1.20 per person. At £18.60 per person I believe this is still a good value meal in London.

Verdict – Variable quality dim sum and unfriendly staff made my latest visit to Royal China a disappointing one. Some star dishes and very reasonable prices warrant a “revisit” which I will report in the very near future.