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 ontained 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.

The Bear, Camberwell

Despite Camberwell's increasing reputation for all kinds (and all budgets) of great food, it still seemed unlikely that this bare-bones pub, just opposite the Walworth bus depot and furnished, as far as I could tell, with tables and chairs nicked from the local secondary school, could house anywhere worth eating at, never mind somewhere worthy of a special journey. Sure, the beer selection was decent (largely Brixton Brewery but also Timothy Taylor and a couple of other bits) and there was a chalkboard by-the-glass wine list that perhaps hinted at greater capabilities, but the Bear - and I'm being kind, here - does not feel like a gastropub.

And yet, just around the back of the bar, past the DJ booth (well, of course) and the *shudder* toilets (more on that later), there is, astonishingly, a 12-seater kitchen counter restaurant serving the kind of menu that wouldn't be out of place anywhere with table service and tablecloths. It's a lovely thing, the menu at the Bear, partly because in a city whose asking price for a meal out has spiraled from "how much!?" to "2nd mortgage" in the space of 6 months, it seems exceedingly reasonably priced, but mainly because, without a hint of exaggeration, you will want to eat every. damn. thing. on it.

Alongside cocktails (a very nice Negroni and a very slightly less successful Margarita which could have done with being a bit sweeter and lime-ier but still looked very pretty) we had a ham croquette each and in an instant, as we bit through the crunchy, grease-free breadcrumbs and into the soft, gooey beschamel studded with solid chunks of pig, we knew we were going to be in safe hands. There's a lot that can go wrong with a ham croquette (or jamon croquetta, depending on where you're eating it), but the Bear have got theirs absolutely right.

And from that moment on, we were putty in their hands. Even without the immediacy and flattering attention of the counter service, closer to the experience at a high-end omakase than anything so humdrum as a gastropub, the food at the Bear would have stood out on its own exceptional merits. But watching your bowl of smoked cod's roe being lovingly prepared, then brought together with bubble-crusted foccacia and super house pickles on the counter in front of you, just made the whole thing that much more magical.

Devon crab - a giant mound of it - was boosted by ribbons of delicate pickled cabbage and a zingy yuzu dressing, and then topped with roasted peanuts and (I think) powdered nori, a merging of the finest British ingredients and Japanese technique that was impossible not to love.

Even more astonishing - and believe me, that's saying something - was smoked eel, which we first spotted above the coals on a miniature yakitori grill then later served (quite brilliantly) with pickled forced rhubarb and ginger. Soft, sweet and salty, and with the smokiness a subtle extra note rather than anything too intrusive, it was another masterclass in Japanese-leaning seafood cooking and had us swooning.

Coyly described on the menu as 'XO noodles', this turned out to be a strangely familiar arrangement of thick, bouncy belt noodles soaked in a complex herby, meaty sauce and topped with a soy-cured egg yolk. I have to assume the more than passing resemblence to Bancone's handkerchief pasta presentation is more than a coincidence - influences stretch across cuisines as well as geography, of course - and alongside the witty appearance it was distressingly easy to wolf down.

Duck "Kyiv" has understandably, even at this early stage of the restaurant's life, become a bit of a signature dish. Because what's not to like about minced duck wrapped around wild garlic butter, coated in breadcrumbs and fried, and then dropped on top of a silky-smooth buttered mash and game jus? Nothing, that's what. But although this was indeed lovely, it was hardly the only reason to visit the Bear. I honestly believe you couldn't order badly here.

So, the perfect restaurant, then? Well yes... and then no. I would have been more than happy to give the Bear my top marks - stellar, original and inventive cooking, matched with magical service - until I made the unfortunate choice to visit the conveniences. What greeted me was like something from the last days of a festival - a graffitied chipboard cubicle containing a dirty single toilet with no seat, and an empty soap dispenser. And I don't care how charming and unaffected you think it is to offer a bathroom in such a state, I'm afraid if I'm paying £80 for my dinner the least I expect is not to physically gag at the thought of having to use it.

But, you know, there is a lot to love elsewhere at the Bear. And with at least the possibility they could get that disaster of a bathroom fixed - and I very much hope they do - I will give them the benefit of the doubt and just dock them just the two points. But please do bear in mind (no pun intended), that your enjoyment of a meal here may depend on your being able to hold it until you get home. Or at least to another nearby pub whose bathroom arrangements are less medieval.

I want to end on a high note though, and so I will. A final bowl of gorgeous donuts straight out of the fryer, dipped in home made lemon curd, brought the evening to a slightly more sanitary end, and actually a few days later my over-riding memory of the place isn't - fortunately - of the horrors lurking behind the gents sign but of that fantastic smoked eel, the gooey ham croquettes, and the engaging and enthusastic manner in which it was all served. The Bear will, I'm sure, do well. But I might wait for a return visit until certain assurances have been made.

8/10

Dream Xi'an, Tower Hill

There are lots of good Chinese restaurants in the Holborn/Bloomsbury area of London. Most seem to have popped up in the last decade or so, I assume alongside an influx of Chinese students attending the many nearby high-profile universities and colleges, because I'm fairly sure when I first started commuting here back in 2006 there wasn't nearly the same wealth of choice. I've tried as many of them as solo lunch break dining allows - JinCheng Alley is excellent, as is Restaurant HE - and I can thoroughly recommend getting a group together for a trip to Happy Lamb, a serious and accomplished hot pot restaurant which still manages to be enormous fun.

But my own personal area favourite is Master Wei, a Xi'an noodle shop just off Queens Square Gardens which despite its enduring (and completely justified) popularity somehow manages to squeeze in any number of walk-ins during those all-important lunch hours. I've been going here for years to enjoy their big bowls of thick biang biang, and have yet to master the art of not getting myself splattered from head to toe in chilli oil before the journey back to the office.

And now, there's a new member of the Wei group to get all excited about. Dream Xi'an sticks to roughly the same formula - dishes largely from China's Shaanxi province (where the owner Guirong Wei hails from), served for not much money - and can be found on the ground floor of a new office block near the Tower of London, putting it right in the catchment area for millions of hungry tourists every year. Tradition dictates that anywhere blessed with heavy footfall that doesn't have to try too hard for custom tends, well, not to try too hard. But it's a pleasure to report that I would thoroughly recommend Dream Xi'an to anyone finding themselves in need of a meal before or after a go on the Tower Bridge Experience or look at the Crown Jewels, and would be worth a journey from further afield as well.

Sesame chicken arrived first, one of many irresistable cold dishes from Northern China (see also beef in chilli oil, and tripe) that even when fairly carelessly thrown together has the ability to do the job but when done properly, as here, seriously impresses. The dressing had a wonderful smoky, umami-rich sesame flavour and a soft, gently clingy texture which coated the chicken beautifully.

Spicy sliced beef had a similarly robust flavour profile but suffered very slightly from rather dry and collapse-y (for want of a better made-up word) beef. The best versions of this dish can boast strips of moist beef that have a decent bite halfway between firm and completely insubstantial and I'm afraid this could have done with a bit more texture. Still, as I said, plenty else to enjoy.

As per the other Wei places, the biang biang noodle game at Dream Xi'an is absolutely on point, and a very strong reason to visit by itself. Arriving tastefully arranged with dainty cubes of pork, bright green pieces of boiled bok choi and a tomato-egg mixture draped on top, it was soon all mixed together and left for us to demolish in the most efficient and/or most disastrously messy way we could come up with. Part of the issue (he says, trying to excuse the utter carnage he left behind in Tower Hill that evening) is that biang biang noodles, with a plural 's', is a bit of a misnomer - usually what arrives is one giant thick noodle nestling amongst the other ingredients, and so it's essentially impossible to grab a bitesize portion without either clumsily attempting to rip it apart with chopstiks or gnaw chunks apart with your teeth. However you manage it though, and I'm sure you'll do a better job than me, you're rewarded with thick, bouncy fresh noodles with a lovely bite.

Wontons with chilli did their job perfectly, yet more fantastic fresh noodle work in silky, slippery chilli oil. Perhaps more familiar than the other more specialist regional dishes, these were still worth the order and would have disappeared in record time if they weren't so hard to grab hold of.

Only the Xiaolong Bao were perhaps the one dish I wouldn't order again. Instead of a delicate, translucent dumpling encasing liquid broth these were bready and solid, with no soupy insides at all. Whether this was a mistake, or some deliberate regional variation I'm sure I don't have the experience to determine, but either way they didn't do much for me at all.

Overall, though, Dream Xi'an works thanks to the fact they do a number of things very well indeed, and don't charge the earth for any of it. True, where at one time regional Chinese food could claim to be one of the great food bargains of London it's now more of a mid-range treat, and a spend per head with a couple of bottles of Tsingtao could edge towards £30. But we are right in the middle of Tourist London, and these are lovingly handmade dishes of fresh hand-pulled noodles and authentic regional Chinese heritage, and £30 is still an insanely reasonable amount to pay for dinner.

More than anything, I'm just happy that it's ever increasing areas of central London, and not just the suburbs which have been able to boast about places like Silk Road and Dragon Castle for ages now, are blessed with fantastic Chinese food. I note there's a new branch of Master Wei in Hammersmith, and of course Dream Xi'an itself is unofficially the 2nd branch of Xi'an Impressions which has been feeding the post-soccer crowd at the Emirates stadium for over a decade. The slow march of specialist, regional Chinese cuisine across the capital is the happy result of a demanding immigrant population no longer content to put up with less than the quality they could get back home, and increasingly open-minded Londoners who have tried biang-biang and sesame chicken and know damn sure they want more of it. And you can count me amongst that number.

8/10

I was invited to Dream Xi'an and didn't see a bill, though as I mention above what we ate would have come to about £30pp.

Solo, Aughton

When I was first out of university, trying to decide what to do with my life, and with no long term plan other than the fact I knew - eventually - I wanted to move to London and stay there, I got a job as a cashier at Ormskirk Abbey National. Ormskirk is ostensibly a market town, but if you went expecting stalls laden with craft spirits, high-welfare butchery, local cheeses and organic seasonal vegetables, well let's just say you were likely to be disappointed. Cheap underwear, knockoff Chinese kids toys and somewhat less-than-official football scarves and hats they could do, but none of those things would really justify a special journey to the place. It was a little town of little ambition, and while there's nothing wrong with that exactly, it was hardly a scintillating destination.

So it's somewhat of a strange situation, 20 years on, to be sat in a very smart modern restaurant in an otherwise completely unremarkable suburb of Ormskirk called Aughton, whose population of 8,000 has four - yes four - Michelin stars to share between them. By way of an example, the most starred city in the world, Tokyo, can only boast 50,000 people per star. And if you're thinking "why Aughton", well you're not the only one. To this day I'm not sure how they've become the Ludlow of West Lancs, but here we are anyway, with Moor Hall (two stars), the Barn at Moor Hall (another star) and now Solo (one star).

Like a number of fine dining restaurants that charge a fair whack for dinner in the evening, at lunchtime Solo charges a much more reasonable amount - £45. Of course, this neccessitates fewer courses, and the use of cheaper raw materials - think pork, cod and trout which in the evening are swapped out for turbot, smoked eel and pigeon - but of course it's all coming from the same kitchen so you get all the same high-end techniques, bells and whistles, applied to slightly more conventional ingredients. Although in this case, still excellent - like this chalk stream trout glazed with tare with an intelligent and attractive accompaniment of dill/buttermilk sauce and cucumber "spaghetti".

And this pork belly (I think it was belly anyway) in the form of a nugget of pulled meat inside a thick, crunchy casing of maple toffee. With it, a remoulade of celeriac and apple and then on top of it all a liberal dressing of truffle "snow" - a very Moor Hall technique I hope they don't mind me saying - which finished it all off beautifully. There was just nothing less than brilliant about any part of any of these dishes, you really do get your money's worth.

Mains, it won't be a surprise to discover, were equally impressive. A neatly sliced loin of venison came with a deep, rich sauce that would have been worth the price of admission by itself. Alongside, a cute little plump baby cabbage - "pancetta cabbage" - which I think I detected had little teeny bits of bacon hidden within its folds, quite an achievement considering it looked like a whole fresh (albeit tiny) cabbage. A dollop of caramelised pureed cauliflower and a little stack of braised white beetroot added yet more interesting textures and flavours. I wanted this to last forever.

And the other main, a big fillet of cod, fried to a lovely golden crust, on top of "aerated tartare", a supremely light and fluffy mousse-like dressing studded with little crunchy bits of something-or-other (perhaps puffed wheat?), kale and brown shrimp. Like everything else, it was full of strong flavours, an impressive array of textures and was so easy to eat that despite the generous portion it disappeared in record time.

From a very attractive cheeseboard containing just enough French options to keep traditionalists happy but with Sparkenhoe Red and Berkswell amongst others forming the British offering, we were as part of the lunch menu offered Mrs Kirkham's, Garstang Blue and Camembert, enough to keep most people happy I should think. We certainly were.

And the sweet dessert was fantastic too - a supremely light "cheesecake" topped with apple (Bramley) sorbet and cute balls of stewed apple (Braeburn) which created a nice mix of temperatures as well as textures. Oh, and I should spare a mention for the wines too, particularly those matched with the desserts and cheese, which included a sweet plum sake which was truly exceptional.

Topped and tailed by an excellent bread course and some chocolate truffles, the total bill (minus the £20pp deposit) came to £82 each, a figure that could have been tamed if we hadn't had quite so many matching wines but hell, why on earth would you want to do that? The spirit of generosity from the kitchen matched with a sparkling front of house meant we just wanted to spend all day there, and it was a genuinely sad moment as we polished off a Caol Ila and headed out into the Ormskirk rain.

The truth is, I couldn't fault a single thing about Solo. The cooking is exciting and inventive, full of fun and personality, and at lunchtimes at least incredibly good value. Sure, you will have had pork and cod and trout before, but they've found ways of preparing these cheaper ingredients that makes you hardly miss the premium deal at all, although I'm sure dinners are equally lovely. It's a comfortable and attractively fitted out room, with nice well spaced tables and plenty of elbow room. The Moor Hall pedigree is evident from the range of techniques and command of flavour on display, but this is very much its own own beast - a neighbourhood restaurant done good as opposed to a multi-starred international destination restaurant. Although I would happily make the journey back from London to Aughton for another lunch at Solo, just see if I don't.

10/10

The Garden Museum Café, Lambeth

Beautiful 15th century Lambeth Palace is a strange London landmark - widely recognisable, with a stately position Thames-side and passed by a number of busy bus routes, it is nevertheless very rarely visited, most of the main structures off-limits as the Archbishop of Canterbury's official residence and despite the existence of an interesting little Garden Museum, the garden itself is only open to the general public two or three days a year. This spirit of reclusiveness extends to the Garden Museum Cafe, a lovely glass-box modernist annexe to the Tudor palace which, despite doing a brisk trade during the day, is open for dinner only two days a week. And yet there's something about places with weirdly restrictive opening hours (see also: Sweetings, which I'm definitely going to try one day) that makes me want to visit them even more.

So on a rainy Tuesday night, we turned up at the Garden Cafe for our usual early sitting to find it, somewhat against expectations, completely full. "Are you here for the talk?" asked the front of house; turns out there was a special early sitting for attendees of a talk about gardening happening in the museum a little later, and sure enough by 7pm or so the room had half emptied out.

Nothing seemed to affect the speed or attentiveness of the staff however, and both before and after the great gardening exodus, service was spot-on. House focaccia - chewy and salty and lovely - arrived alongside a bottle of very natural Garnacha which, admittedly, took a bit of getting used to at first but then I like a challenge. I know natural wine has its critics - and I'm sure they'd find plenty to criticise with this bottle, cloudy and funky and every other natural wine cliché - but I always get the feeling I'm doing the world, and myself, a favour by drinking it. Almost certainly rubbish, of course, but there you go.

It's a sign of a good restaurant that it can put together a strictly seasonal menu that's just as tempting in the depths of midwinter as in the middle of summer. Pumpkin minestrone had chickpeas, carrots and kale in a hearty, herby vegetable broth and was extremely enjoyable. Also excellent was a silky smooth whipped cod's roe on toast, which for some reason I forgot to take a picture of but I'm sure you can imagine what cod's roe on toast looks like. A healthy portion too, for your £8.50.

But best of the starters - and I would say that because I ordered it - was a snail and bacon salad, which had plenty of meaty snails and lots of lovely crisp bacon dressed in a nice sharp vinaigrette studded with fried croutons. Like the other dishes it was full of rustic charm, and generous of flavour.

Two pescatarian main courses demonstrated the Garden Café knows how to cook a bit of fish. Monkfish came as a butter-browned chunk of tail sliced into two, dressed with a dense, salty tapenade and on a bed of green sea beet leaves. I seem to remember there was some yellow beetroot in there too.

...and a generous fillet of plaice sat on a very buttery mash (you have failed at mash if it can't be described as "very buttery") and a genuinely lovely leek velouté, like a bonus course of posh soup. On the side, a plate of purple sprouting broccoli (PSB for those in the know) with another knockout sauce - "sauce Maltaise" which (he quickly Googles) is apparently a hollandaise made with blood orange. So now you - and I - know.

All the dessert options sounded like they had something going for them (Munster & Roquefort is a great little combo for a cheese course) but we ended up with a rhubarb craquelin choux bun, a delicate ball of pastry stuffed with cream and topped with some glorious sugary chunks of stewed rhubarb. And despite the generosity of the previous courses, it didn't last long.

It's a fun little place to be, is the Garden Café, and a great place to eat. Service, as I mentioned earlier, was completely spot-on and only added to the general atmosphere of easy conviviality. There are lots of restaurants, up and down the country, attempting to do the kind of thing the Garden Café is doing but it's notable how often "charmingly rustic" slips back to "plain and careless" - it takes real skill to make ostensibly simple and unadorned food work this well. "It costs me a lot of money", as Dolly Parton so famously said, "to look this cheap".

And speaking of cheap, the bill for three people and that bottle of natural wine came to just under £55/head, which is about as good value as you're going to find in London these days. And probably most other parts of the country too, for that matter. Lambeth Palace itself may remain stubbornly restricted, but the Garden Café is more than worthy of your attention, a popular and friendly little operation with a personality all of its own.

8/10