Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
1
I’ve had some time on my hands. My recent disappointing meal at Middle Kingdom prompted to me to wonder where I might get my next Sichuan fix, having deleted two places in Chinatown for being seriously manky with very poor food safety ratings.
So, with that time, I’ve cross- referenced all the Chinatown places withe the Scores on the Doors website and come up with this list of places rated 3 or above which should mean everything is OK (or, at least, was when they were last inspected).
China City
BBQ Restaurant (yes, it is Chinese)
Happy Seasons
Red n Hot
Spicy City
Hunan
New Emporer
Little Yang Sing
Most of these are Cantonese (and New Emperor is a personal favourite). It’s good to see Red n Hot back there with a score of 3. It was one of the manky places I mentioned and is owned by the same company as Middle Kingdom. Definitely giving it another try now.
On the other hand, it was gobsmacking to see that the Yang Sing is only a 1 - a place that 30 years back was generally regarded as the best Chinese in the whole of Europe.
Do you cook, John? Cooking pretty decent sichuanese food is actually pretty straight forward once you buy a few extra ingredients. That’s usually how I get my fix these days.
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
3
I do. Although not often Chinese food - although I do have a Fuschia Dunlop on the shelves.
Fuchsia Dunlop’s sichuanese book is great and so reliable! I cook from it all the time and things nearly always turn out beautifully.
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
5
Yep. I have done a couple of things from the book, although not recently.
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
6
OK - treat the rating for Red n Hot with a pinch of MSG. A recent Tripadvisor review describes the bogs as “rancid” which is the reason I stopped going a couple of years back. Places that can’t keep the public areas clean have goodness know what going on where you can’t see it.
Shudder.
I saw Hung’s, a dining fixture in London Chinatown, with its doors shuttered last week (temporarily?) when health inspectors found a serious infestation of cockcroaches in the premises.
