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The Dragon Inn; Ho-Ho
THERE are times when only Chinese food will do. But when fear of clamping or general indolence prevent my getting in a car and going straight to Gerrard Street, I have up till now had to make do with the best to hand. Of course, there have always been Chinese restaurants outside Soho, but once you have stopped convincing yourself, and others, that the food down the road in the Winsome Wok is really very good, you know, what you are left with is £20 worth of disappointment and too much monosodium glutamate.
But if the new taste-awareness and culinary renaissance of the Eighties offered a little bit of Paris even in far-flung Fulham sidestreets, now Soho is beginning to pop up in the most unexpected places. Gerrard Street's Dragon Inn now has a twin in Westbourne Grove, and South Woodford, with a luxuriously revamped Ho-Ho, brings Chinatown to suburbia.
Both the Dragon Inn and the Ho-Ho are much smarter than their Soho counter- parts, but with the same extensive and unpretentious menu. The Dragon Inn is white and gold on the outside, brightly lit within by little spotlights suspended from the ceiling, the room a haven of west London chic, with whip-thin twigs arching out of elegant white vases. Service can be erratic, but since it is near enough home for me, I use it as an upmarket take-away.
Chicken in lemon sauce here is not the sweetened, battered version you get in most high-street places, but sharp and springily meaty. If you like taking risks with your cholesterol levels you can try the duck in the same sauce, but eat it quickly: it cools to a duck-fat-saturated lemon curd. Spare ribs come a number of ways, the best is with glossy mahogany plum sauce, the steamed/ribs trim and cartilage-crunchy, the sauee sweet but not cloying.
All the old favourites are here: squid, carved into little white pineapples, smothered in ginger and spring onion, the deep-heat balm of hot and sour soup, steamed or grilled dumplings, those ivory crescents stuffed with finely minced pork, with their little bowl of vinegary dipping ,sauce, soft-fleshed prawns with waxy cashew-nuts. Odder variants come in the form of shredded sea blubber 'crunchy' with shredded duck, fried crispy intestine, or stewed intestines 'in all styles'. Yum.
The Ho-Ho in South Woodford is a princely affair. There is a special Lobster Feast for £20 a head — steamed scallops, paper-wrapped prawns, lobster with ginger and black bean sauce or a 'classical' black bean sauce, sweet and sour squirrel fish (I haven't been able to find out what this might be), 'sea-spice' chicken shreds, egg- flecked rice and fruit to end with.
A la carte fare is similarly exalted: no eating by numbers here. We started with quick-fried mussels, the glistening black shells a perfect scoop for the rich garlicky sauce, pungently dotted with black beans, a won tun soup made from a clear, herbally odoriferous stock and slippery-fresh dum- plings. Next, we had the crispy aromatic duck , cooked to featheriness and wrapped with hoisin sauce and shards of pale-jade- green cucumber and spring onion in parchment-thin pancakes. The very superior griddle-sizzled fillet steak, seared to a tiger-striped brown on the outside, its fleshy interior a velvety pink, came with just-caramelised onion and garlic. But it was the quick-fried lamb shreds with spring onions — a perfect, sauce-moistened mound of scallion-spiked meat — which was the quickest plate to empty. To end with, I meant to have their 'Chinese Coffee', which seemed to be Irish Coffee with, instead of whisky, mei kwei lu, a liqueur distilled from dried wild roses.
In both restaurants, you would expect to pay about £20 a head, but it depends so much on how you order that it is difficult to set any guidelines. You could certainly eat for less.
One thing I'have noticed in my five years of restaurant reviewing is that everyone I speak to seems to be a restaurant critic manqué. If you're one, your time has come. Zagat Surveys — who publish a number of successful guides to restaurants throughout America — are planning one for this country, and want information from enthusiastic diners-out. So if you are interested in contributing, write as soon as possible, and with a large stamped addres- sed envelope, to Zagat London Survey, 1 Rosslyn Hill, London NW3.
The Dragon Inn: 63 WeNtbourne Grove, London W2, tel 229 8806 Ho-Ho: 20 High Road, South Woodford, London E18; tel 989 1041.
Nigella Lawson
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