Excellent Value & Much Scrumptiousness: The Saturday Supreme Menu at Yauatcha City

Name: Saturday Supreme Menu at Yauatcha City

Where: Yauatcha City, Broad Gate, London, EC2M 2QS, http://www.yauatcha.com/city/supreme-saturdays/

Cost: On Saturdays, Yauatcha City offers this great value set-price menu at £49 per person, inclusive of a pre-lunch and a post-lunch cocktail, half a bottle of wine per person, and a four-course meal between 12pm and 6:30pm.  There are two house wines to choose from in the Supreme Saturday menu, an Italian red and an Alsatian white.  

About: Regular readers will know that I regard Yauatcha, both Soho and City branches, as the best dim sum venues in London.

Yauatcha City is packed during the week with a mainly work crowd, but I was surprised to find, arriving on a Saturday lunchtime, that this Liverpool Street eatery was packed with Londoners even when the City types are away for the weekend.

The Supreme Saturdays menu at Yauatcha City is available from 12pm until 6:30pm on Saturdays, for a minimum of 2 guests. There are four courses on this menu – two courses of dim sum (fried and steamed), followed by the main course (a choice of three dishes with each person choosing one), ending with the dessert course.

Yauatcha’s open-air terraces are now open to the public, with great views over Broadgate Circle, they are ideal spots for dim sum and after work drinks.

What We Ate: The menu starts with a platter of 4 fried or baked dim sum items. The venison puff, with unctuously tender venison in a richly flavoured sauce encased by a buttery and super light pastry, was definitely a treat.

Equally good was the mushroom spring roll which had a delicate truffle aroma, while the lobster roll came in a snow-white crisp rice-flour casing around a rich, velvety lobster filling - quite a technical feat.  

The sesame prawn toast was an accomplished version of a dish which has been a British favourite since the 1970s, with the tail of a whole king prawn beautifully presented, emerging from the top of the dumpling.

Moving on to the platter of 6 steamed dim sum dumplings – the pork and prawn shui mai and the har gau prawn dumplings were both excellent – light, flavoursome and so fresh.

There were two steamed dim sum in striking jade green casing (the colour coming from Chinese chive extract) - the black pepper and Wagyu beef dumplings were scrumptious, while the vegetable wrap had great textures (crunchy but also soft) was deliciously scented with a slice of fresh truffle.

The mushroom dumpling was filled with a rich variety of aromatic wild earthy fungi while the crystal dumpling wrap with pumpkin and pine nut had a vibrant orange casing (coloured with carrot juice). 

The main course offers a choice of three dishes, we opted for the lobster vermicelli and the pork belly. The lobster was segmented, wok-fried with vermicelli, the meat was sweet and so tender, making for a deliciously luxurious main course.

But my favourite main course was the truffle pork belly served on the rib, and beautifully presented with a topping of Shimeji mushrooms, aromatic diced truffles, and with a side serving of baby asparagus and an edible nasturtium flower. The meat was very tender, coming off the bone, it was sweet and totally scrumptious.

The main courses came with a portion of jasmine steamed rice and stir-fried pak choi with garlic.

Included in the Saturday Supreme menu is a selection of desserts from Yauatcha's famous range of patisserie.  One of our choices was the delectable apricot yoghurt, with honey cream, freshly baked orange madeleine, and almond.

The other choice was the jasmine honey dessert – a milk chocolate dome filled with jasmine cream and caramelised honey, served with a quenelle of honey ice cream. Stunningly presented as might be expected, both desserts showed off the skills of the patisserie team at Yauatcha. We were also impressed by the size of the desserts – they were surprisingly generous.

What We Drank: The Saturday Supreme menu includes both a pre- and a post-lunch cocktail, and while making our food selection on the open-air terrace, I had a well made, strong Negroni that really hit the spot! Dr G chose the Thea martini - a refreshing an appetite-stimulating concoction of Zubrowka vodka, ginger juice, vanilla and chilli sugar, apple juice and lime.

With our meal, we chose the house red - a Cabaletta, Rosso delle Venezie 2014 from Veneto. This oak-aged blend of Corvina, Rondinella and  Sauvignon was medium bodied, with prune and cherry fruit flavours and very soft tannins. Enjoyable in its own right, it worked surprisingly well with many dishes on the menu.

We also got to try and a glass of the Sauvignon Blanc on tap which is available at the open-air terrace at Yauatcha (this is not part of the Saturday Supreme menu). This was a fresh, herbaceous and young Sauvignon Blanc, easy drinking and ideal for the English summer.
   
For our post lunch cocktail, we opted for the Manhattan and Espresso Martini. Combining sweetness with astringency, these were the perfect accompaniment to our desserts.
  

Likes: great value set menu, fantastic cocktails. Stand out dishes for me were the truffled pork belly and the patisserie desserts. 

Dislikes: None

Verdict: The Saturday Supreme menu at Yauatcha City is one of the best value menus in London right now – four courses of exquisite food, boozy cocktails and wine all thrown in. I have already been twice, and cannot wait to return! Very highly recommended.

More Monkey Business at Yauatcha City!

Name: Yauatcha City (Chinese New Year Menu)

Where: Broadgate Circle, London, EC2M 2QS, http://www.yauatcha.com/city/

Cost: The special menu designed for Chinese New Year at Yauatcha includes 4 dim sum, 4 mains courses including a rice dish, and the dessert of 6 specially created macarons. Menu items can be ordered individually or the entire CNY menu at a cost of £113.20 for a two people meal, with a matching flight of 3 Monkey 47 gin-based cocktails at £28 per person. I have also shown the menu items priced individually. 

About: Opened in May 2015, Yauatcha City is the 2nd branch of this restaurant in London after its Michelin-starred sister in Soho, which has been serving top notch dim sum to Londoners for more than 10 years. Yauatcha is also renowned for its super-refined French patisserie with an Asian twist, and its selection of fine teas. It has long been among the best places in London to go for tea and cakes, as well as cocktails.

Yauatcha is more affordable and a little more casual than its big brother Hakkasan or the fine dining & Peking duck specialist restaurant HKK, so this is a place I return to regularly, whenever I crave top quality dim sum and Chinese food.

The service is exceptional at this branch and this is due to mostly one person - Lim, the restaurant supervisor. I was lucky enough to meet her on my first visit to Yauatcha City and then again on this occasion. It is rare to find staff who are this passionate and knowledgable about the food being served at their restaurant so it was a real joy to see her again and get a detailed explanation and her recommendations on the CNY menu items. I wrote about Lim in my previous review (read it here), and if you do get to visit Yauatcha City, I strongly recommend asking for her help.

This Chinese lunar year is the Year of the Monkey, and so cleverly Yauatcha has teamed up with Monkey 47 Schwarzwald Dry Gin to create a menu with three matching Monkey gin cocktails, and even gin-flavoured macarons.

What We Ate: The Year of the Monkey menu, starts with a traditional Yusheng (aka Yee Sang or Prosperity Toss) salad. Yusheng literally means raw fish (which in Cantonese sounds like 'abundance'), and it is a special Chinese New Year dish to wish for prosperity in the coming year.

Yauatcha's version combined sashimi scallop with radish, Japanese seaweed, grapefruit, pomegranate seeds, crisp-fried pumpkin strands and shimeji mushroom, pickled onions, plum sauce and shallot oil (£15.80). These we tossed with gusto at the table, while wishes ourselves to win the lottery or become millionaires in 2016, etc (although having never bought a lottery ticket in my life, I have my doubts about whether this will come true).

The selection of dim sum followed. The caviar siew long bao, also known as Shanghai dumpling (£6.80), was perfectly made, with a luscious glutinous casing surrounding a rich broth, made even more special by its topping of caviar.

The foie gras roast duck puff (£5.80) had a wonderfully buttery mille-feuille style pastry case to match the sweetness and luxury of its contents.

The caviar taro dumpling (£6.20), a vegetarian dish, was gorgeously presented, the 'caviar' cleverly made from seaweed gum flavoured with truffle, the casings naturally coloured with extracts of carrot and pandan leaves, filled with a mixture of flavours and textures of Asian vegetables.

Lastly, the black truffle edamame sesame ball was light, airy, and delicious (£6.50), the filling a clever mixture of edamame and truffles in place of the more familiar black sesame paste.

The soup course was a sea conch Chinese yam soup (£11.80). A very traditional menu item, this had a wonderfully fragrant broth with goji berries, and little pieces of tender chicken, longan, yam and delectable layers of diaphanous, sponge-like bamboo pith floating at the surface.

The Hakka fortune pot (£38.80) was undoubtedly the highlight of the meal - it had a variety of different meats, fish and seafood presented together in a clay pot. There were deep-fried battered prawns, meaty abalone, gourd slices filled with dried scallops, the most delectable roast Peking duck and beef, slices of steamed seabass, lotus root, Chinese leaves and mushrooms. It was one of most luxurious dishes I have ever tried on a Chinese menu, and a real feast of fine flavours and textures. Lim explained that the fortune pot is a traditional dish from the Hakka region of China, where layers of different dishes are put together in a large pot, with meat at the bottom and fish then seafood on top - this is to symbolise reunion and harmony, and is used to celebrate important family occasions.

The rice dish was dry oyster fried sticky rice (£11.80) - this was exceptionally good. The rice was not like stick rice from Northern Thailand or Laos, but rather the stickiness came from the cooking of the rice in plenty of chicken stock and the addition of dry prawns and oysters which imparted great umaminess to the final dish.

Because I loved the next dish so much on my last visit, I couldn't help myself from ordering a portion of Yauatcha's fried chilli squid (£11.50) rolled in oatmeal (Malaysian Nestum oatmeal Lim tells me) and curry leaf. This, in my opinion, is a must order when visiting this restaurant, and was just as delicious as I remembered.

For dessert, we had a selection of 6 macarons (£9.70 per 6). For the CNY menu, the macaron flavours reflect the ingredients that are used to make or drink gin, including gin and tonic (made from Monkey 47 gin, grapefruit pate de fruits and tonic buttercream), juniper berry (with juniper berry ganache), bitter orange almond (filled with almond buttercream, bitter orange pate de fruits), elderflower ginger (filled with elderflower and ginger buttercream), rose and rosehip (filled with rose buttercream and rosehip jam), and camomile (camomile buttercream).

I've made a lot of macarons in my time, including while I was at Le Cordon Bleu, and I know how hard they are to get right. Yauatcha is famous for their patisserie, and the macarons I had there were faultess - the shells crumbled on contact with the lips, and the centres were soft, velvety and aromatic. 

What We Drank: We started with a couple of cocktails at the bar. The Aged Negroni (£13) blended Tanquery No. Ten gin with Campari and Lillet Rouge sweet vermouth, all aged for one month on the premises in American oak. The Asian Daiquiri (£11.50) was a delectable blend of Diplomatico Reserva Rum, plum sake, lime, orange marmalade, vanilla and chilli sugar - refreshing with a lovely citrus notes.

Priced at £28 per person, the flight of three gin cocktails is designed to partner the Chinese New Year menu. It includes a saffron gin and tonic, the 'pomelo fortune' with grapefruit, cranberry and mandarin bitters, and with dessert a pink kumquat with sloe gin and ginger liqueur. 

The Saffron Gin and Tonic served with the salad was an inspiration - 1724 tonic was poured through a strainer with a pinch of saffron strands. The flavour from those, and the one or two strands that passed into the drink, were enough to impart a thrilling intensity of the aromatic herb without overpowering the drink, and just a slight tinge of watery gold to the colour.

The Pomelo Fortune accompanied the dim sum. With a tropical blossom fragrance from the pandan leaf and grapefruit peel at the glasses' edge, and gin mixed with velvet falernum liqueur, pomelo, grapefruit, cranberry and orange, and mandarin bitters, this was a heavenly, and complex drink.

With our macarons, we had the Pink Kumquat cocktail. Kumquat is one of my favourite fruits, and this cocktail was punchy, with refreshing citrus aromas. Monkey 47 sloe gin was blended with Diplomatico Reserva rum, Domaine de Cantone ginger liqueur, cranberries and rice syrup.

Likes: If you visit Yauatcha City, make sure to ask for Lim – her knowdedge is encyclopaedic, her enthusiasm and friendliness are contagious. For me, the stars of the evening were the Hakka fortune pot, the fried chilli squid, the dry oyster rice and the adorable macarons. The gin cocktails were spectacularly good and unusual, with truly Asian flavours, and the saffron gin and tonic is one I will experiment with at home. 

Dislikes: None.

Verdict: For one of the best Chinese New Year menus on offer in London right now, hurry along to Yauatcha City before the season ends on 21 February 2016. Very highly recommended.

Top Notch Dim Sum, Champers and Cocktails - My Kind of Sunday Lunch at Hakkasan Hanway Place

Name: Hakkasan Hanway Place (Dim Sum Sunday)

Where: 8 Hanway Place, London, W1T 1 HD, 
http://hakkasan.com/locations/hakkasan-hanway-place/

Cost: Dim Sum Sunday menus at Hakkasan Hanway Place are priced at £58 (‘Signature’ menu including ½ bottle of Champagne plus 2 cocktails per person) and £48 (Classic and Vegetarian menus – includes no Champagne, but offers unlimited Taiwanese tea plus 1 cocktail). The food offering is the same between the two non-vegetarian menus, the only difference being the drinks.

About: Regular readers will know I've long been a fan of Hakkasan's dim sum, so I was chuffed to return to try their new Dim Sum Sunday Signature menu, launched in October 2015.

Served from midday until 6.45pm, Hakkasan’s ‘Signature’ set menu includes a pre- and a post- dinner cocktail, and a ½ bottle of Louis Roederer Brut Premier NV Champagne per person. The food menu features a salad starter, a range of 8 different dim sum (4 steamed and 4 baked/fried), two main courses with an accompanying vegetable dish and fried rice and a dessert. For the Sunday dim sum service, the restaurant employs a DJ who selects a range of lounge- style music well suited to the day after a late Saturday night.

What We Ate: The menu started with a refreshing salad of crispy duck served with pomelo, pine nuts, shallot and a mix of green leaves and cress. Seasoned with a sweet and lightly tart dressing, with warm slivers of duck meat, it made for a delicious start to our meal.

Next up was the dim sum. This included the steamed morsels har gau (shrimp dumplings), scallop shumai, Chinese chive dumplings (a personal favourite), and duck and yam bean dumplings. The pastry was light and delicate as only top quality dim sum are. They were freshly made using great ingredients, and well seasoned.

Equally good were the roast and baked dim sum which included royal king crab and truffle roll, a sumptuous buttery baked venison puff, smoked duck and pumpkin puff in a beautiful pumpkin-shaped pastry case, and golden radish with crab meat pastry.

For our mains, there were two – a delectable lettuce wrap of finely cubed seafood and water chestnut in XO sauce, and also a stir-fry of black pepper rib eye beef with an unctuous merlot sauce. The beef, a Hakkasan signature dish, was meltingly tender and very richly flavoured and as good as I remember from when I first tried a few years ago.

To accompany we had a platter of tender green asparagus, with ginger and spring-onion fried rice.

For dessert, we opted for the apple tatin, with vanilla ice cream, caramel and calvados. I love serving a traditional French tarte tatin at my supperclub, but Hakkasan’s version was something else.  With the lightest of pastry topped with layer after layer of fine caramelized apple slivers, this was a very refined interpretation of a French classic.

The Jivara Bomb was another beautiful dessert combining a praline of hazelnut encased in rice crispies and topped with a warm milk chocolate sauce.

What We Drank: We were chuffed to meet the charming Jefferson Coltro, a fellow Brazilian and Hakkasan’s head bartender, during our visit. Jefferson took his time explaining to us, the various cocktails on the menu (all alcoholic options are priced at £12.50) and below are some of his suggestions.

The Morello Collins blended cherry, almond, Tanquery No. 10 gin, lemon and Peychaud's bitters, and was light and refreshing. The Hakushu Crush had a bracing combination of one of my favourite fruits, the kumquat, with Japanese yuzu, Suntory Hakushu 12 year old whisky, Drambuie, ginger and cardamom bitters. I really enjoyed this cocktail, generously laced with whisky and some wonderful citrus notes.

Jefferson Coltro recommended a third cocktail which we found hard to resist - the Amer l'Orange. Made with Grey Goose l'orange vodka, Amer Picon (a French aperitif combining orange, quinine and cinchona and genetian), lemon, cinnamon and cranberry – a magnificent cocktail, it had a good hit of alcohol with bittersweet citrus flavours. I loved it. The menu also includes 1/2 bottle of Louis Roederer per person, and as there were two of us, we shared a full bottle!

With our desserts we had two other cocktails - the Mayahuelo was made from Del Maguey Vida mescal tequila, Antica Formula vermouth, apricot brandy, almond syrup and lime. Strong, smoky and flavourful, this was a great cocktail to finish our meal. The Charantais Toddy, ordered to accompany the tarte tatin, was served warm, combining Hennessy Fine de Cognac with cardamom, cloves and cinnamon, it sent us into the chill November late afternoon with a soothing glow.

Likes: Dim sum of the highest quality, stunningly presented, cool vibe courtesy of the resident DJ, great cocktails, generous Louis Roederer Champagne offering. Excellent value.

Dislikes: None.

Verdict: The Dim Sum Sunday Signature menu at Hakkasan offers excellent Chinese fine dining at one of the most glamorous venues in London. A personal favourite, and at £58 including two cocktails and half a bottle of Louis Roederer Champagne per person thrown in, as well as plenty of delicious food, it is probably the best value for money menu in London right now. I can’t wait to return. Very highly recommended.

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.