Hainan is an island off the south coast of China about the size of Vancouver Island - that makes it bigger than Sicily and Sardinia and twice the size of Hawaii, with a population of over 10 million people (more than London). And yet inevitably until last week I'd never heard of it. I make no excuses for this - my knowledge of the geography of China is pretty pathetic, and I should do better, but in a way it's the job (or at least partly the job) of these little regional super-specialist restaurants to draw attention to some of the bewildering variety of Chinese cuisine, much like Silk Road did for Xinjiang and Dream Xi'an and Master Wei did for Shaanxi.
So Hainan cuisine then, or rather Qiong cuisine which is how they describe it on their website, appears to involve quite a bit of poaching of meat instead of the Cantonese/Beijing style crisp-skinned roasts, matched with fragrant fermented herbs and vegetables and the occasional claypot rice dish. Hainanese chicken, for example, is a thing you may have heard of before as it turns up in a certain form on the Din Tai Fung menu and is one of my favourite things to order there. Once you get used to the idea of poached chicken (speaking as someone brought up in Liverpool and didn't have it until I was well into my thirties), it really is a very lovely thing indeed.
Anyway I'm getting ahead of myself. The lunch menu at £13.50 for a main and a side seemed an eminently reasonable place to start, and this is beef Hun - strips of dried beef which had a very interesting collapsey texture (not chewy at all) in a tofu beancurd sauce with lovely big fried tofu puffs adding a bit of gentle crunch. But almost my favourite element were the fermented mustard greens, lovely dark green chunks of pickled brassica which provided another level of punchy flavour.
We tried to share the duties of sides to cover as much of the menu as possible. My own choice was pickled mooli, brilliantly strongly flavoured with that familair pongy (in a good way) turnip-y aroma and very generous in portion size.
Tea eggs were also good, soft and subtly flavoured and although I would have perhaps liked a bit more seasoning, although maybe I'm just thinking of the salted egg you get with ramen and these had a different job to do. They still disappeared quickly enough.
And I didn't get to try any of the braised cabbage, as it got demolished when my back was turned, but by all accounts that was very good too.
Thinking we couldn't come all of this way without trying the famous Hainanese chicken, they kindly let us order a half portion of the poussin off the evening menu, and it didn't disappoint. Served at room temperature to showcase the delicate flavours at their best, every last bit was perfectly tender and perfectly seasoned, and the accompanying chilli-pickled pineapple was wildly addictive. I could have ordered a portion of that on its own. A little bowl of mushroom rice, fluffy and light and moreish, rounded off the savoury courses.
Service was alert and pleasant, but then as we were the only table occupied that Friday lunchtime, it was quite easy to command their attention. I'm hoping it's just a case of the word not getting out just yet about this dynamic little spot on Upper Street, because at prices like these - as I said, £13.50 for a main and a side, and £15 with a drink as well, even with service added on is a bit of a bloody bargain. And for the chance to try a style of Chinese regional food that hitherto hasn't been very visible in the capital, it's worth every penny and more.
Overall, there's really not much to fault about Hainan House. Boldly different, great value and smartly presented, even the hilariously precipitous journey to the loos, involving a crazily inclined staircase in three wildly different proportions, like something from a fairground fun house, just added to the charm. Whether it finds an audience rather depends on Londoners see authentic regional Chinese food coming out of Upper Street - even top ramen peddlers Kanada-Ya took a while to get going a few doors' down, even as people were queueing down the street for the St Giles branch. But, with a bit of luck, and a little time, they should do very well indeed. At least, they very much deserve to.
8/10
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