Taste of China – Restaurant Review
Yesterday, my husband and I joined a few family members for some great food and laughs at Taste of China in the London suburb of Harrow. I had not heard of the place before nor had any idea where it was.
After clearing up some confusion that meant us waiting in a different restaurant, we ended up in the right place 🙂 Despite it being a Tuesday evening, the place was completely full and there was a buzz across the 3 dining areas. In terms of decor, there was no modern chic chinese touches, rather a standard clean restaurant look together with the customary brick fish pond. I am sure the owners are thinking ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ and rightly so.
I cannot say much about the meat dishes, but the veggie options were numerous and quite tasty! As we were with some regulars, I did not spend longer than 5 minutes going through the menu before relinquishing the ordering. The menu is quite exhaustive and you will no doubt find every chinese dish imaginable both for vegetarians and non-veggies.
We all shared a variety of starters and would say the lettuce wraps were delish! Chap chum was a dish that I had never come across: the execution is similar to crispy duck rolls but with sautéed vegetables.
As usual, after having lots of starters to nibble at I didn’t have much tummy space for the mains. So it was down to ordering a single main that would be just simply amazing! I had to look no further than the first item on the mock meat (gluten) list. I hadn’t even seen it on the menu before I expressed my wish to the group to have sweet and sour MOCK pork!!! I could not believe it was there and so my decision was made…
To give you a background to this dish: when we travelled to Hong Kong a few months ago, we came across this vegetarian hole-in-the-wall restaurant where large queues were forming outside the front door. We finally made it in, but were struggling to find a place to sit down as the locals were pushing past us and grabbing the vacant spots. I don’t know what we were doing as it works the same in India!! Thankfully a lady sat at a big round table called us to join them (in Cantonese, of course)…..next hurdle was reading the menu. With no hope of doing so and a desperate need to eat, we just pointed at whatever the locals on the table were having that looked delectable. One of which was the sweet and sour mock pork. I cannot express enough how amazing it tasted, simply unfaultable! It was so tasty that I would go any day to the place again, or generally Hong Kong for just food (not shopping)!
So going back to the Taste of China, it was like being back in the Far East. I was very excited, but did it live up to the authentic taste I had experienced in Hong Kong? Soon after my first bite, it was all very quickly gone. The dish even impressed the carnivores amongst the group.
As I enjoyed all the four courses there (chap chum is an intermediate course) for a reasonable price and with the signature authentic sweet and sour pork dish, I would definitely recommend Taste of China for being a tasty vegetarian friendly restaurant. As far as I could see, the carnivore looked happy to me as well! 🙂 In terms of service, I would say they struggled to give us attention when the restaurant was full but on the flip side, when we were the last ones in the restaurant, they didn’t pressurise us to leave.
Black Pepper Tofu
For dinner I made an Asian dish from Yotam Ottolenghi’s vegetarian cookbook, Plenty. We came to know about this cookbook from my husband’s friend, Niraj, who equally enjoys cooking vegetarian food. We have heard really great reviews about the Ottolenghi restaurants in London and can’t wait to visit so that I can post a review of my experience. As Ottolenghi himself is not a vegetarian, he also has a non-vegetarian Cookbook out.
I have only had 30 minutes to glance through Plenty, but I am very impressed with his creativity and originality. (In fact my husband glanced through Plenty whilst walking back from the library and was inspired to spontaneously stop at a market stall and buy some fruit and veg!) With that said, a lot of the recipes revolve around generous use of oil and butter. These recipes are great for dinner parties, but if you want to enjoy them on a daily basis, I would recommend altering them to make them healthier; as I have done for this black pepper tofu recipe. I have substituted some of the ingredients (to make it less fiery and make it more store cupboard ingredient friendly) and opted to stir fry instead of deep fry and slashed the butter amount by almost 8 times. It was still very delicious!Â
Serves 2/ Total time: 40 minutes
400g firm tofu, cut into large chunks (about 3X2 cm)
2 tbsp oil, (I used Chinese stir fry oil)
Cornflour to dust tofu
1 knob of butter
1/2 large onion, thinly sliced
1/2 red (bell) pepper, diced or 2 large mild chillies, sliced
6 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tbsp grated ginger
2 tsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp brown or caster sugar
1 tbsp coarsely crushed black pepper
2 spring onions, cut into 3cm segments
1. Heat oil in a frying pan or wok. Toss the tofu in cornflour and shake off any excess. Pan fry the tofu and turn every few minutes so that each piece is golden all over and has a thin crust. Do not stir too much, just move the tofu around by shaking the pan or using tongs. This process should take roughly 15 minutes and once done, remove from pan/wok and leave aside for later.
2. In the same pan, melt butter. Add onions, garlic, ginger, and capsicum/chilli. Saute for 15 mins on low to medium heat until all the ingredients are completely soft.
3. Next add soy sauce and sugar and stir before adding the crushed black pepper (if using a pepper mill, it is best to crush the pepper beforehand so that the liquids don’t evaporate away before you are done). Add the fried tofu and spring onions to warm it up for a minute or two. Serve hot with (wheat) rice.
If you have used other recipes from Ottolenghi’s book, Plenty, or you have tried to make this Black Pepper tofu, I would be keen to hear your thoughts. Enjoy!
VegDelights 