Last week Food Friday covered small-plate dining and this week we’re getting even more micro
Last week Food Friday covered small-plate dining and this week we’re getting even more micro, as Hakkasan Hanway Place begin their Dim Sum Sundays, tiny mouthfuls of perfection.
It is, of course, the traditional Sunday dilemma: a joint of roast beef at home cooked until John Lobb wouldn’t look askance at it, or delicious morsels from China via Tottenham Court Road? My answer is always clear, and not just because my consumption of Chinese food over the past 29 years renders me eligible for a passport and a seat on the politburo.
Amid the black lacquered wood, small steamer baskets appear with quivering gelatinous offerings, pork and prawn shumai and Chinese chive dumplings with prawn and crabmeat, yellow and green and translucent white parcels. They yield to the teeth with a satisfying smack.
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The next round was dry, the baked goods, and more mixed in quality. Baked venison puffs, golden and flaky with a sweet filling, were the winner, while crispy smoked duck and pumpkin puffs, shaped to look like pumpkins with tiny green leaves sprouting from the top, gave from their crispy surface onto another sweet substance. The fried taro pear with chicken, also shaped like its fruit, was the disappointment: sludgy and stodgy and with no discernibly pleasant taste.
I don’t normally like squid – all that tentacular squdiginess – but the salt and pepper squid here was tender and moreish (that’d be the salt), and grilled Chilean sea bass with Chinese honey was the same.
With a cocktail to start, half a bottle of Perrier Jouet rose, dessert and a digestif cocktail to finish, for 58 of your English pounds per person, this even seems like good value.
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