The reliability of dim sum

Joy King Lau, 3 Leicester Street, WC2H 7BL

Lunch for two: £20

There are many reasons to return to a restaurant: it may serve excellent food, be one of those undiscovered gems you feel smug about when the rest of the world starts to appreciate or it may be particularly convenient or reliable for you. The Joy King Lau falls into the latter category of places for me. It is reliable. Located as it is on the edge of Leicester Square, it is even convenient. Describing a restaurant I like as reliable or convenient feels like damnation by faint praise; and yet that is precisely how I would describe several oft-visited places that account for many of my happy food memories. Does that make me a bad person? Or even, and far worse, some sort of anti-foodie?

Our last visit was for a Saturday lunch of dim sum.  Mr F had to work so I offered to take him for lunch to offset the pain of working at the weekend. Starving and desperate after a morning of serious work: a quick, voluminous and low-risk lunch was required.

Lots of other people had conceived a similar plan so, even though Leicester Street was closed, enough people had climbed past the roadworks to make the queue for tables stretched down the stairs and out of the door. This didn't put us off; as seasoned pros, we knew that the man with the walkie talkie would usher us up to the top of the building when he heard there was only two of us.  In your face, polite people who joined the back of the queue!  

The menu is typical of an ordinary Cantonese restaurant. All the dishes you would expect are represented but nothing more. The main event is the dim sum; our one evening visit found the place empty and the food disappointing. However, the dim sum is reliably tasty.

We had roast pork cheung fun which were a bit low on pork but otherwise fine, slightly oversteamed and unremarkable Shanghai-style dumplings and a dish of rice, chicken and sausage that was perfectly pleasant aside from the disappointingly low sausage count (two small pieces - sigh).  The squid cakes were good though: golden and not quite crisp on the outside and chewy in a good way on the inside. Scallop dumplings were a highlight (of sorts) with a pleasantly crunchy texture to the filling. We washed it all down, as everyone does at the joy King Lau, with the simple Chinese tea that is presented unbidden on arrival.

It's not just about the food here though. I think people come back for its happy combination of reliably good dim sum, low prices, central location and lively atmosphere.  The Joy King Lau is typical of many Chinese restaurants in the area: it is located over several floors of an old house, perpetually noisy and fantastically cheap. However, unlike many other restaurants in the area, the service is pleasant at the same time as being brisk and the food is always good value. 

I am not alone in my fondness for the Joy King Lau. According to a civil servant friend who works on our relationship with China, it is the lunchtime restaurant of choice amongst staff at the Chinese Embassy in London.  That probably says enough. Vindication over.

Three breakfasts out East

Dalston Lane Cafe, 107C Dalston Lane, E8 1NG

The Counter Cafe, 4a Roach Road, E3 2PA

Tina, We Salute You, 47 King Henry's Walk, N1 4NH

Ever since the Forks relocated from south of the river to Hackney, we have been engaged in a long (and thus far fruitless) search for a truly great place for breakfast in our new 'hood. As previously mentioned, we both love the posh full English at Medcalf but we can't escape the feeling that there must be something just as good closer to home.  Armed only with our bikes and the authoritative work on breakfasting in London, here are the results of our most recent morning outings.

From the outside, the Dalston Lane Cafe looked like the real thing. The uninspiring shop front and checked table cloths hinted at a proper, old fashioned cafe. The food was a pleasant surprise - good quality eggs and sausages served with crusty, seedy granary bread. Not a turdy sausage or slice of plastic bread in sight. However, something about the Dalston Lane Cafe did not feel right. It is perhaps too hip for its own good. From the lacklustre service by a young man who clearly would rather have been at home working on his latest project to the prevalence of ironic hair, it has none of the charm of a proper cafe. The juxtaposition of old and new East London at the Dalston Lane Cafe served as an unwelcome reminder of what has been lost. Even though the breakfast was decent, the atmosphere was too stilted and self-consciously cool for us to contemplate adding it to our list of breakfast favourites.  

We decided to venture further east (Hackney Wick) to sample the breakfast at the Counter Cafe. Judging by the number of fixie bikes in the car park, most of its customers had chosen to cycle there. We were glad that we had too, for the cafe is well and truly off the beaten track in an industrial complex near to the south east corner of Victoria Park. It was easier to forgive the Counter Cafe its hipness because, somehow, it manages to capture the buzzing, creative atmosphere of the East rather than its uglier self-loathing arch-hipness. Table football and good music play their part in achieving this. 

The menu is reminiscent of the relaxed, sunny places scattered across the English-speaking southern hemisphere: lots of avocado and banana. The coffee was expertly made but, even with a varied range of delicious-sounding food on offer, the place somehow managed to fail to live up to its full potential. The full Counter breakfast was, to Mr Fork's mind, a bit pretentious and fiddly.  Good quality ingredients didn't quite gel into a coherent plate of food. For example, the sausage: thin chipolata-style links described by Mr F as a bit like merguez but drier and less interesting. Smoked salmon, poached eggs and potato cakes were better: perfectly cooked eggs and pleasantly-textured fish but the potato cakes would have benefited from being left a little longer in the pan. I would return if I was in the area but I am not sure I would cross Hackney again for the specific purpose of visiting.

An honourable commendation goes to Tina, We Salute You. Although it was the trendiest and least cafe-like of the three, their excellent coffee, quirky decor and fabulous jam selection wooed us.  We will definitely go back to sample their banana bread and (again) avocado-based snacks. 

Three very different breakfasts and, whilst we now know our local cafes a little better , we have yet to find breakfast perfection. But we still have the whole of Bethnal Green, Mess on Amhurst Road and the wilds around London Fields to explore. Who knows what they will bring?

The Counter Cafe on Urbanspoon

Tina, We Salute You on Urbanspoon

Revolutionary fervour achieves desired result!

Ba Shan, 24 Romilly Street, W1D 5AH

Meal for two with a couple of beers: £50

Back from a week-long conference in tourist-trap-hell, I was overcome by the need to immerse myself in London.  What better way than trying a restaurant with a re-invigorated take on Chinese cooking, showcasing the cooking of Sichaun's less-renowned neighbour: Hunan?

Ba Shan is the middle sister of three. The newest of the family, it positions itself somewhere between the smart but pricey Sichuan at Bar Shu and the cheap, cheerful and plentiful street fare of the Baozi Inn. Fuchsia Dunlop, food writer and alumnus of the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Chengdu, provides advice to all three. And in the case of Ba Shan, she has also played a role in the recent redefinition of the restaurant. Ba Shan originally specialised in "small-eats", which received a lukewarm reaction from critics and bloggers alike. This reputation for average food at above average prices effectively deterred me from visiting until I saw the news that Ba Shan was launching a new menu incorporating food from Hunan. I knew the time had come to give it a chance.

There was little evidence of tapas-style dishes on the menu, a page of dumplings at the back is all that remains of its former aspirations. Instead, they have developed an expansive menu drawing on the cuisines of Sichuan and Hunan, including some offerings from Dunlop's books on the subject. 

We started with Hunanese Four Treasures. Clean, crisp vegetables and peanuts with a lively dressing were a good way to prepare our palates for the spiciness that we knew would follow.  Alongside the treasures, a plate of crispy beef and onion was intriguing. Oddly reminiscent of old fashioned English cuisine, the beef was fabulously frazzled, the onions slightly softened and served in a light, spicy sauce that complemented rather than masked the flavours of the main ingredients.

After a short pause, the mains arrived. They were spectacular.  A giant platter of fish topped with chillies and submerged in broth and chilli oil was perfect: meltingly soft fish, lots of chillies and a spicy but somehow also quite subtle broth. Naturally, it was hot but done in a way so that the heat did not overpower the gentler flavours of fish and ginger. It was the sort of dish that makes you think about returning with all of your friends so that they too can experience its awesomeness.  

Hand-torn cabbage in vinegar was also nicely done with simple flavours which acted as a welcome accompaniment to the other, intensely flavoured, dishes on offer. We were flagging a little by the time the final dish arrived: Chairman Mao's red-braised pork. Full of treasures and fish, we lamented my tendency to over order. Not for long though. Coronary-inducing levels of fat in the chunks of pork belly, held together by a dark sauce flavoured with star anise. Comfort food of the highest order. Our inner-revolutionaries were sated.

We left trying to decide whether what we had just eaten was merely the best Chinese meal we had eaten recently or whether Ba Shan was already on the way to becoming our new all-time favourite Chinese restaurant. High praise indeed.

The food of Hunan has eluded London diners in recent years, so the redefined Ba Shan is a welcome addition to the city's restaurant scene. Ba Shan has also managed to do something quite rare in London. It serves excellent Chinese regional cuisine without the slightly aggressive service and dingy environment that we often accept as normal in this fair city. I am immensely fond of our dingy cafes - a price we often pay for authenticity - but at Ba Shan excellent authentic and reasonably-priced Chinese cooking is served in a stylish environment and in a way that has the potential to appeal to the mainstream, not just hardened foodies and Chinese students. That can only be a good thing.

A refuge from the rain in London Fields

The Prince Arthur, 95 Forest Road, E8 3BH
Meal for two with beers and a glass of wine: £60

On one of those awful nights that makes you wish you could move south in October and not return till April, we did what every rain-sodden Englishman (and woman) does when the nights draw in and the weather is relentless - we went in search of a warm pub.

We found the Prince Arthur in one of the nicer parts of Hackney and upon arrival snagged one of the few remaining empty tables. Within ten minutes of our arrival the bar was packed. The relief at having avoided a trudge back to Dalston with empty stomachs was palpable.

We both had that ravaging hunger that is brought on by spending time out of doors on a cold evening so we ordered winter food: heavy on the pork products and things that had spent time in hot oil. We ordered the guest ale, Seafarers, which was smooth and golden - what an autumn evening should be.

And then things took a bad turn. The olives tasted of something odd. Dentist. No really. Apparently they had been marinated in lemon and mint but, frankly, marinated in mouthwash would have been credible.

Fortunately that was the only real low point in our meal. A terrine of pig's cheek with black and white pudding was good. Visually, it was a posh gala pie. The tasty strands of pressed meat and the slice of black pudding worked well together by providing a contrast of piggy tastes and textures. The white pudding was a bit dull and lacked flavour but that didn't spoil an otherwise well-conceived dish.

However, this was mere preamble and, on our visit, the mains were the thing. A pork chop was perfectly cooked. The rind had been scored, turning the edge of the pork chop to crackling and this sat well alongside the tender, juicy meat. However, even with my sizeable piece of pig heaven, I was quite jealous of Mr Fork's fish and chips. The fish was perfect. Light crispy batter cracked open to expose soft, flaking fish. Probably, we agreed, some of the best fried fish either of us had ever enjoyed. We were not surprised, therefore, to learn that the fish is bought every morning from Billingsgate Market. The chips were of the skin-on, hand cut variety and the peas were nicely squishes and properly seasoned.

The Prince is not cheap (£60 for one starter, two mains and dentist olives) and Forest Road is a little way from transport. But our considered verdict is that it is still worth a visit. In addition to good food, the ales are also well kept and the decor stills conveys the feel of an old East London pub. A fine place to hide from the weather.

Is it cool to be hot?

Chilli Cool, 15 Leigh St, Bloomsbury, WC1H 9EW

Meal for two with a few beers: £45 ish

It was Mr Noodles's review of Red 'N' Hot that finally made me visit Chilli Cool. I had read enough positive reviews to formulate a vague notion to visit for myself. But it was the possibility that it might out-cook Red 'N' Hot that made me call Mr Fork and inform him, in no uncertain terms, that we were dining out in Bloomsbury that night.

Chilli Cool was busy. Even quite late on a week night, they were pretty much full and a steady flow of people trickled into the restaurant well into the night.  As a result, the service was a little erratic. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, mad service often adds to a restaurant's charm. However, on our visit, the service was perhaps a little too crazy and there was a palpable sense that staff were slightly panic-stricken as if they had lost control of that evening's service.  I felt sorry for the people who ordered the green beans that were abandoned next to the cutlery tray and languished there for the duration of our meal (if we hadn't ordered the same thing, we probably would have re-housed them to our table).

The fried pork ribs with chilli were outstanding. It was reminiscent of Chongqing chicken, only better because in place of chicken were juicy, crispy pieces of pork complete with bones for gnawing on.  The green beans with minced pork were good, the beans had a pleasantly charred taste which complemented the salty savoury sauce. So far so good.  

Unfortunately, the sliced beef Sichuan style lavishly topped with chilli and Sichuan pepper was disappointing.  Not much heat and only a hint of that unique head-rush pepper taste, as if the peppercorns had been hanging around in a cupboard a bit too long (I know this taste because my own spice cupboard stock control is poor).  It wasn't awful, the beef was nicely tender but the lack of heat and a heavy hand with the oil marred our enjoyment of it. 

So did it topple Red N Hot from its cherished position in the Fork household?  No, not quite. It was close and the pork ribs almost had us, even with the disappointing beef. But it just couldn't beat Red N Hot's dark, steamy mystique.  Yes, it does have a bizarre system of categorising guests according to preconceived ideas of spice tolerance but the chilli-loving Forks have never had a problem with this, we just ask them to make it hot (though hopefully not in a vindaloo-swilling way).  But maybe it's been too long for me to be sure.  I had better go back and check.  

I heart the Regency

The Regency Cafe, 17-19 Regency Street, Westminster

Breakfast for two: £12

Returning to the Regency is like stepping back to a bygone age of cooking.  It evokes rosy feelings of an earlier time when people drank tea and ate dripping on their toast - even if that time pre-dates your own birth by a good 30 years.  There's no dripping on offer now but they will make you a liver sandwich.

Even if you have never been, you would recognise the Regency.  The white and black exterior and the plastic tables sitting under half-curtained windows have featured in advertisements and a film (Layer Cake, if you are interested). Indeed, the tea at the Regency is actually made in the same type of oversized metal pot that features in the scene.  Its famous history neither adds to nor detracts from the Regency's charm.  It has its own character and appeal that make it possibly the finest cafe in London. 

Food is ordered from the counter, which is usually manned by a formidable lady with an impressive vocal range who shouts the orders as they come out.  Beware if she appends "going cold" at the end of your order, it is a sign that you have been too slow to collect your food, marking you out as a newcomer to the Regency.  The familiarity of the staff with many of the customers suggests that there are plenty of regular visitors. On the morning of our last trip, we spotted taxi drivers, office workers from nearby Government Departments, local builders and a handful of tourists.

We were there for breakfast - a rather large affair that involved black pudding and bubble alongside the standard fare.  It was good.  The eggs were soft, the sausages herby and meaty (not those fairly meatless pink things that turn a uniform shade of brown when cooked) and the whole thing swam with baked beans. It was not the best cooked breakfast either of us had ever eaten (the jury is still out on that one, although Medcalf on Exmouth Market is a current favourite) but it was enormous, tasty and pretty cheap.  In short, everything you could want from a proper greasy spoon.

The only downside is that it keeps slightly inconvenient opening times: it closes at seven in the evening during the week, at noon on Saturday and does not open on Sundays. So, unless you happen to live or work in the area, it seems like a lot of effort just for a cafe.  That said, I think it is probably worth it. To experience a small part of London's culinary history, if nothing else.

Japanese delights in Mornington Crescent

Asakusa, 265 Eversholt Street, NW1 1BA

Meal for four hungry people with beers: £115 (ish)

Just north of Euston but a few streets shy of Camden, Asakusa has the qualities of a hidden gem, although in reality it has a well-established and loyal following. After our first visit, we found ourselves agreeing with the diverse crowd of locals, trendy types and Japanese ex-pats - Asakusa is well worth searching out.

Asakusa has a cosy, if slightly scruffy, charm.  The setting is evocative of a somewhat less salubrious izakaya - think old Japanese posters and tiny bar at the back. It is absolutely tiny but friendly service and a lively atmosphere mean that the proximity of your neighbours is part of the experience; and provided us with a helpful preview of the contents of the extensive menu as they arrived next door.

Variety is a virtue at Asakusa and the menu encompasses the full range of Japanese casual dining.  We chose to exploit this by ordering extensively. Purely for research purposes, naturally.   We ordered so well that our waitress raised an eyebrow and questioned whether it was, in fact, too much.  Never.

Scallop sashimi, though delicate and light, was outshone by divine buttery yellowtail. Kabayaki eel was excellent - the sticky sweet sauce balanced well against the pleasantly gelatinous texture of the fish. We tried two grilled dishes, some predictably good yakitori and, for the slightly more innard-inclined, grilled chicken hearts.  The slightly chewy texture and mildly offaly taste of the chicken hearts even enticed the anti-insides members of the party to try and agree that they were delicious. A deep-fried softshell crab appeared, hot and crispy with the squidgy insides just starting to ooze out.  That disappeared as quickly as it arrived. Thin slices of very rare beef, reminiscent of carpaccio, with tiny mounds of ginger and garlic was equally well received; as was tender, gingery beef shogayaki.  However, it was the slow-cooked pork belly from the nimono section of the menu that won the prize of the evening. The pork melted into tender fatty strands, coated in a savoury sauce of mirin, soy and porky goodness that had been spiked with a dab of mustard.  The sauce was so good, what remained when the pork had been devoured was surreptitiously tipped into the rice when that arrived.

Alongside all of this, the basic dishes on offer at Asakusa are also worthy of mention - in particular, their use of dashi.  Both the agedashi tofu and the miso soup had the deeply satisfying, umami-rich savouriness that comes from good stock. The team at Asakusa deserve credit for not ignoring these essential elements of good Japanese cooking.  And so to the only low point of the meal: the pickles.  They were just a bit underwhelming alongside the otherwise brilliant dishes we tried.  Not quite sour enough and with insufficient bite to complement the other dishes.  

Overall, the food was satisfying and tasty, the beer cold and the service relaxed and friendly.  Waiting in the hallway, another diner asked me if this was my first time at Asakusa.  When I said that it was and that I was enjoying it, she assured me that I would be back.  I think she was right.