661978 Sat Oct 24 13:13:18 -0700 2009 11 42 U.K./Ireland 0 5127886 A newly opened Beijing place, more or less across the street from Ba Shan. The chive dumpling (ji3 cai4 he2 zi3) was delicious, a half-moon turnover, pan fried to crispiness, a frsh oily sheen, and with a truly well flavoured filling that spoke eloquent chive, punctuated with bits of eggs. An excellent example of this Beijing snack, and probably the best I've had in London. Beijing style noodles (zha2 jiang4 mian4) is also a good honest rendition. Fat, soft wheat noodles (Northern China favours wheat over rice) with a good shadow of chewiness. A classic meat sauce flavoured with a intensely umani and fairly salty bean paste, topped with silvers of cucumber, carrots and (iirc) green peppers. Cucumber is the most common topping, but the additional vegetables are not rare. Glad to finally have some serious Northern Chinese food in the area. Will be back to try more. Sat Oct 24 13:13:18 -0700 2009 10076 limster 1 5130073 What are prices like here? Sun Oct 25 16:48:18 -0700 2009 5127886 21930 Dave MP 2 5130262 Pretty inexpensive, £2 for the chive turnover/dumpling, ~£6-7ish for the noodles. Went back and had steamed pork buns that were very well seasoned. Decent but not spectacular soy milk and fairly bready crullers. ~£3 for these together. Sun Oct 25 17:49:47 -0700 2009 5130073 10076 limster 1 5139583 Had the Beijing bean paste noodles described above yesterday, they were excellent, in this case topped with beansprouts, and shredded carrot ad cucumber. Really deep flavour from the fermented beans, and nice light star anise notes riding over. Also had a vegetable bun, which was pretty bland, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but pretty soggy as well, which certainly was. A promising opening though, cheers Limster. Thu Oct 29 04:56:04 -0700 2009 5127886 213046 skut 1 5146826 Great place - really buzzy. Can we tricky to sit at one of the large shared tables. It's open from 7am until 4am and owned by a pretty Beijing news presenter who's often there. Most of the dishes seem to be pre-prepared and are served within 3-4 minutes. It's a great place serving cheap Beijing fast food. I definitely going back! Sun Nov 01 09:36:45 -0800 2009 5127886 279534 londonst 2 5146856 Are there any items that are specifically for breakfast? Sun Nov 01 09:54:14 -0800 2009 5146826 21930 Dave MP 2 5147104 "Most of the dishes seem to be pre-prepared and are served within 3-4 minutes" Is this a good thing? Wouldn't it impact the quality of the food a lot? Sun Nov 01 11:46:28 -0800 2009 5146826 64584 PhilD 1 5176940 Excellent pan fried dumplings at 2 quid a pop (they're larger than average though.) Pretty good noodles. They're 5.50 a bowl btw. Also, they have an extensive looking Chinese menu which I'll be uploading the picture of ASAP. It includes a bunch of stuff that's not on the other menu. Very friendly chef! He said he'd make us anything we wanted as well. Thu Nov 12 15:04:33 -0800 2009 5127886 113604 JFores 2 5177983 Nice! Would someone be willing to help translate and transliterate the items on the Chinese menu? Or at least the exciting things :) Fri Nov 13 01:33:18 -0800 2009 5176940 21930 Dave MP 1 5177995 Went during the week. Ordered a noodle soup (£6.50), chive turnover/pancakes (£4.50) and a stir fry of cloud ear mushroom + lotus root (£7.25) off the Chinese menu (as recommended by the very friendly owner, the Beijing TV celebrity, she kept calling me "my darling" which I found amusing). Excellent noodles in the soup but everything else was solid rather than spectacular. Soup broth was a touch bland, maybe just a vehicle for the noodles more than anything else and the squid in the soup was rubbery. Cloud ear mushroom + lotus root was stir fried in a light sauce, quite subtle flavours and more about the textures which were a nice contrast of slimy and crunchy. I'm sure she said there would be some Chinese sausage in the dish but there wasn't and I didn't query in the end. Chive turnovers had crisp pastry but the filling was extremely salty. Limster, is saltiness a distinctive flavour of Beijing/Northern Chinese cuisine do you know? Really nice people and good to have some alternatives to Cantonese + Sichuan so would definitely go back and try more. Perhaps the real delights are to be found on the Chinese language menu, look forward to hearing more. Fri Nov 13 02:26:52 -0800 2009 5127886 28263 oonth 2 5178971 Extreme saltiness isn't a characteristic of those chive turnovers or of the cuisine in general, this sounds more like a batch to batch variation. BTW, if you want more than Cantonese or Sichuan in the area, there's pretty good Foochow/Fuzhou (Northern Fujian) at New Aroma in Chinatown, Shanxi style hand pulled noodles at Noodle Bar in Covent Garden and of course various Southern Fujian and Taiwanese items at places like Kee Lung and Leong's Legends also in Chinatown. Fri Nov 13 10:11:51 -0800 2009 5177995 10076 limster 3 5179274 We need to do a Chinese region restaurant crawl. It sounds better than booze. Fri Nov 13 11:31:12 -0800 2009 5178971 11939 zuriga1