Spoilt for choice in Chinatown

10 April 2012

When Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson had occasion to visit Chinatown, they would leap into a hansom cab and bid the driver head for Limehouse.

The East End of London was handy for the docks, and this was where the "heathen Chinee" established base camp and set up laundries, restaurants and opium dens. The move to Gerrard Street took almost a century and was not ratified until 29 October 1985, as you can see on the engraved plaque commemorating the official "opening" of Chinatown.

In practice Gerrard Street became the heart of Chinatown in the 1970s because Chinese people took over all the property. The final stragglers to move out were an Italian restaurant at 47 Gerrard Street which became a Chinese restaurant called the Friendly Inn, and the last occidental bakery at number 3 which was transformed into China China.

Now Chinatown is a tourist attraction in its own right, with dozens of restaurants and enough exotic shopping to gratify the most determined foodie - everything from bok choi to exotic fish, durian and rambutan.

As you'd expect when restaurants line up cheek by jowl, competition is fierce, which means there are bargains to be had; but there is also that tide of tourists to consider, and numerous businesses have sprung up that are single-mindedly dedicated to parting these trusting folk from their hard-earned. If anything, the more choice there is, the harder choosing becomes.

The people behind the Aroma restaurants are not shy. But they are industrious - now there are three branches all within a 100-yard radius of one another, so business must be booming. In the Moet & Chandon London Restaurant Awards 2000, Aroma II in Shaftesbury Avenue won the prize for best Oriental Restaurant, and you'll find a colour photo of the presentation (plus some of the more glowing quotes about Aroma II) in the window of Aroma I in Gerrard Street. Meanwhile, there's the newest Aroma - number III - directly opposite at number 39 Gerrard Street.

Like its siblings, Aroma III is a very good restaurant. It is a shock to venture into a restaurant for the first time and find yourself quoted at length on the menu, but thankfully it is also a pleasure to find that you still agree with everything you've written, albeit about another restaurant!

"Three" has an admirably unfussy dining room. Simple and functional, it stretches away behind the rack of barbecued meats that is displayed in the window. The menu - as ever - is long enough to take to a desert island along with the Bible and Shakespeare. Aroma menus repay careful reading and in helpful fashion the one at number three has grouped a good many fascinating dishes under the heading Aroma Special. Who could fail to be inspired by "roast (hand rolled) whole suckling pig (24 hours notice) £128"? Coming back to earth, try the steamed king prawns - large and so sweet - or that trusty favourite steamed scallops. Or there's an amazing Peking-style dish (subtitled, "a must, as recommended by Fay Maschler") - stir-fried scrambled egg white with minced fish and crab meat, served with rice vinegar. This is a light and savoury delight.

If you fancy something very odd, try the braised pork crackling, black pudding, turnip and chives. This is wondrous strange, the crackling has been braised until soggy, the "black pudding" comes as neat cubes of bland, dark, amorphous stuff and the turnip is ... well turnip. Even a noted turnipophile like Baldrick would be impressed.

The Chinese have a much more sophisticated appreciation of texture than we do. Have the roast crispy chicken with red bean curd sauce; it is terrific, juicy flesh and chicken-skin-crackling. Also notable is the stir-fried snow pea shoots with minced garlic - they taste agreeably of iron and make you feel healthy. The food is good here, the service friendly, and I can only reiterate the advice relating to Aroma II which appears at the top of the menu here - make up two-thirds of your order with dishes you know and try something more adventurous for the rest. How rare to be in perfect agreement with oneself.

If Aroma III is something of a class act, the prize for least fussy, quickest service and best value goes to a barbecue house in Macclesfield Street, just opposite the old-established Dutch pub called De Hems. This place is actually called Lee Ho Fook , but it doesn't say that anywhere - at least not in English.

Don't concern yourself with the much larger restaurant that does have a sign in English saying Lee Ho Fook (which is just around the corner on Gerrard Street), just look for the red-painted double shop front on Macclesfield Street with a Spartan interior and a man standing in the window chopping up ducks. Until 2000 this place only occupied the right-hand shop, but then they expanded into next door and now boast a double-sized dining area and smart new lavatories downstairs.

Some elements have stayed the same, however, including the bill of fare which is hand-written on a grubby poster. This is a barbecue house and what that means is delicious and filling fast food. The meals come plated to table and you get a mound of rice, a splash of thin soy gravy and some chopped barbecued meat on the summit. You'll get a pot of Chinese tea, and each table has a bottle of chilli sauce.

Your meal will cost between £4 and £6 unless you really pig out with extra meat. The meats on offer are crisp skinned roast duck; char sui - lean fillet of pork; crispy pork - fat belly pork with shrapnel crisp cracking; "mixed meat" - don't ask, this is assorted dodgy bits; soy chicken - rich and juicy; and at the pinnacle (the most pricy of all) is suckling pig. Starting with the basic formula, the permutations are up to you: duck rice is good, but maybe duck and pork rice is better? Perhaps soy chicken appeals? But two of you could share a side order of crispy pork - the side orders cost more, you get more meat and no rice. This is a grand place for a quick, easy, cheap, filling feed.

When Jen opened in 1998 it caused something of a stir. The proprietors had hit upon "Hong Kong Cuisine" as a selling point and backed it up by insisting on market-fresh ingredients, at a time when most smart Chinatown restaurants were driving sales by emphasising "Imperial" this, and wildly extravagant that. The attitude at Jen means that the chickens are corn-fed and the cooking authentic, which is admirable. Some of the dishes are a tad more authentic that most Brits would care for - anyone for shredded pig's stomach in spicy sauce served cold? Or what about a dish of ducks' tongues? But choose carefully and you can enjoy some amazing tastes and textures, with just a whiff of strangeness to delight even the most jaded palate. From the small green "I dare you" specials menu, try the shin of beef marinated in Chinese liqueur with preserved vegetable. This is wonderful; firm, chewy, sliced beef (a cross between biltong and bresaola) which comes with salty pickled cabbage - a great appetiser. Then try the charcoal-grilled honey fillet of eel, a huge portion, perfectly cooked, spanking fresh. From the main dishes, the double-cooked Szechwan pork is a good, simple, rich dish.

Another splendid dish is the "steamed free-range corn-fed chicken with red date and Yunnan ham" - this tastes amazing but is the very devil to eat. An enthusiastic Chinaman with a cleaver has reduced the corn-fed chicken to bite-sized chunks with scant regard for the bone structure of the bird. Every morsel has a bone in it. You can look at this two ways: for anyone who enjoys sucking the meat from the bones noisily, it is heaven - for anyone else, it's a bridge too far.

To satisfy the urge for some greens, sautéd Shanghai bak choi with garlic fits the bill. Try one of the noodle dishes - sizzling crispy noodles with shredded roast duck and preserved vegetables - is a winner, a bed of fried vermicelli topped with a rich duck stew. And whether or not you like oysters, you must order the best dish of all - stewed oysters with whole garlic and belly pork. This brings an earthenware pot full of the richest of rich stews. The oysters are firm and savoury. The pork silky and unctuous. If there were a prize for the world's finest gravy, this dish would be a serious contender. The food at Jen is fresh, portions gratifyingly large and the standard of cooking high. The surroundings are more functional than fashionable and the service is friendly in a no-nonsense sort of way.

What's more, you may be lucky enough to watch someone at the next table chomping their way through a cold, shredded pig's stomach. That alone is worth a detour.

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