YiQi, Chinatown

As any self-respecting 2024 London restaurant-goer knows, the trend in Asian cuisine is towards regional specification. You're not just Thai, you're Northern Thai/Isarn. You're either selling Tokyo ramen or Sapporo Miso or Kyoto-style Kaiseki. And if you're Chinese, are you Shaanxi or Xinjiang or Sichuan? No of course you can't mix and match. You wouldn't want people to think you don't know what you're doing, do you?

It seems YiQi didn't get that particular memo. Unashamedly - in their words - "Pan Asian", the influences on the menu at this busy little Chinatown spot skit from Indonesia to Thailand to China, with brief stops in Japan and Malaysia along the way. And when they do settle on a style, for example pork with preserved beancurd, they are likely to zhuzh it up with Iberico pork, or elsewhere make use of premium USDA beef. It all has the potential to be a complete and utter mess.

And yet, it isn't. And that's because everything we tried at YiQi, despite or because of the lack of regional coherence, was at least enjoyable and often extraordinary. The kitchen team are, I'm told, ex-Hakkasan and Yauatcha, which means they have a pretty solid track record in making the kind of food London likes to eat (and, it has to be said, at prices to make them wince). And the very first dish to arrive meant serious business - a "Cordyceps" (there's one for the Last of Us fans) flower chicken salad, arriving prettily in a tube of bamboo and tasting of rich chicken and silky mushroom.

Stir fried clams came with the kind of punchy, salty sauce that would have made the telephone directory edible, and we had a great time polishing them off despite the slightly troubling knowledge that had we been paying this small plate of what is usually fairly inexpensive seafood would have cost £20.50. And to be frank, the yuzu-chilli sauce they came with was so powerful, the dish would hardly had been any less enjoyable if it had only contained stir-fried vegetables - the clams were a bit overwhelmed.

Charcoal-grilled chicken wings were at a slightly more normal price point of £13.80 for 6, and had an absolutely superb texture - a good bite inside, and a delicate crunch to the skin. Just touched by the grill enough to give them a good colour without being overwhemingly smoky, they were a short masterclass in how to prepare chicken wings and I enjoyed them very much.

It's worth stressing - again - that all of the food was at least good, and in the case of this bowl of "Hometown Four Kings" vegetable stir, fry, genuinely impressive. I'd never (to my knowledge at least) tried "stink beans" before, pulses the size and shape of broad beans but with an amazing deep vegetal flavour quite unlike anything else, and were a real revelation. In fact the whole dish was extremely good, a thick miso-enhanced (I think) sauce coating pieces of aubergine, green beans and okra (amongst others) which I would consider a must-order if you make your own trip to YiQi.

Whether or not you do head to YiQi of course rather depends on your attitude to their menu pricing. Malay lamb chops were superb - sous-vided to a yielding chew but flame-licked on charcoal to give them colour and texture - and cost £25.80 for four. Maybe complaining about restaurant prices in central London in 2024 is a bit like shouting into a hurricane but I can't help feeling that you don't quite get your money's worth. Plus our menu was stamped ominously with the words "SOFT LAUNCH", hinting that these numbers could eventually creep even higher.

Anyway, look, their restaurant, their rules. They deserve plenty of credit for using the words "Pan Asian" not attached horrifyingly to the word "buffet", and for a genuinely innovative and exciting menu that draws influences from all over the place and still has a certain style and coherence. London certainly could do with a few more spots willing to stick their neck out and do things differently, and I very much wish them the best. This city is a more interesting place to eat thanks to their arrival, and you can't ask for much more than that.

7/10

I was invitied to YiQi and didn't see a bill.