Yauatcha (Chinese) - Review Two - London, England (9.5/10)

After the huge argument with my husband over last Friday’s dinner at Alan Yau’s latest Japanese eaterie Sake no Hana, I felt a little apprehensive about going to another of his restaurants, Yauatcha, for dim sum today. However, we’ve both been many times before (read previous review here) and he knows what to expect, so it turned out to be a truly enjoyable meal, which can luckily always be guaranteed.

Firstly, we had a late lunch/early dinner from 4 to 6pm, as we were going to a lecture afterwards and didn’t want to go hungry. I requested a table in the teahouse area, which is quieter and far more pleasant than downstairs, where you can’t even hear yourself think sometimes. At this time of the day, the staff were chilled out and the few people around us were simply enjoying a chat over tea and cake. So there was none of that ‘We need the table back in 1 hour and 45 minutes’ nonsense (eg Yauatcha ‘policy’).

There was a good selection of dishes for my vegetarian husband, some of which we have had before, and some of which were new. We had beancurd roll with enoki and cloud ear (£6.50), beautifully presented and deliciously crunchy, fried vegetable Shanghai dumpling (£3.00), which came with a Worcestershire sauce-like dip and salt and pepper silken tofu (£8.50), a substantial portion of pieces of tofu deep fried and served with crispy bits and chopped chillis. This was followed by Hong Kong choi sum in garlic (£7.50), which was very tender, and a large plate of hand-pulled noodle with shimeji mushroom (£8.50). By this time, my husband was already struggling - a very different experience to eating at Sake no Hana!

Meanwhile, I also ordered a few non-vegetarian dishes to have on my own: Shanghai siew long bun (xiao long bao) (£3.80), which were perfectly juicy (although I can’t believe I pierced one by mistake!) and poached Peking dumpling (£4.00), four heavenly little meat, prawn and mushroom morsels poached in a light broth with chopped chillis. To make sure I had enough, I ordered a final thing - har gau (£4.60), prawn dumplings which are my favourite. Strangely enough, I liked this the least. I normally love prawn dumplings, but there was something a bit weird about these. Perhaps the crunchy prawns inside were too whole. It’s difficult to explain. It was also the first time at Yauatcha that I hadn’t ordered my favourites, shitake and duck roll, or prawn and gai lan cheung fun. But it’s good to try new things too.

Then I couldn’t resist wandering over to the cake section to have a look around. As always, the cakes were delightful. I had to have the Matcha panna cotta, which was topped with tart redcurrants, a perfect complement to the slight bitterness of the green tea.

With water, sublime cafe latte, my usual tea smoothie (this time I had a Mama Zhao’s) and service charge, the bill came to £64.00. My husband certainly didn’t mind paying this for what we had. No grumbles this time…And no one stopped me from taking photos (even though this isn’t technically allowed, another restaurant ‘policy’, applied far more strictly at Sake no Hana).

Other London dim sum restaurants I like -

• Pearl Liang (Chinese) - 8.5/10

• Imperial China (Chinese) - 7.5/10

• Hakkasan (Chinese) - 8.5/10

• Shanghai Blues (Chinese) - 8/10

10 - Perfection, 9.5 - Sensational, 9 - Outstanding, 8.5 - Superb,
8 - Excellent, 7.5 - Very good, 7 - Good, 6.5 - Above Average, 6 - Average

Contact Details:
Yauatcha
15 Broadwick Street (on the corner of Berwick Street)
London W1F 0DL
Tel: +44 (0)871 2238066 or (0)20 7287 8484

Helen Yuet Ling Pang @ World Foodie Guide