It gives me the kind of shame I’d feel if I woke up post-bender to find myself the fifth Mrs Gregg Wallace
It’s hard to do justice to the first thing we eat here, a version of the popular dim sum spring onion pancakes, cong you bing, but with added kale. It’s leathery and chewy, whiffing of old fat. If you were to eat something left to mature for weeks under the saddle of a horseman on the Manchurian steppe, it might taste something like this. The pal, an acclaimed restaurant critic who has eaten everything, everywhere, says with some wonderment, “That might be the most disgusting thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.”
This homage to Hong Kong’s classic Chinese-western “tea cafes” is, well, bizarre, from the menu with its winks in the direction of cha chaan teng staples (macaroni soup, peanut butter and condensed milk toast, a rash of Spam) to the service. One server pulls up a chair and grins, “You don’t mind if I join you?” Another, our new best pal, calls us “girls”, “guys” and “laydeez” in rapid succession. They cheerily bellow at each other above our heads. A cleaner trundles a mop-laden trolley past our table.
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