Hillside Thai: Bean Curd Blocks!

Hillside Thai in Richmond (Red Lion Street).
Bright, cheerful room. Serene, dignified waiter. Christmas shoppers scrabbling past the window with their bright bags of crap.

#4 Kanom Jeeb – Steamed dumplings. Pork and prawn (probably not kosher then). Delicate. Served in a basket. Wilted sprig of coriander. Two sauces for dipping: a thick, sweet soy and a bright red thing that made my head sweat.

I've never met a dumpling I didn't like. I even love the word 'dumpling'.

#20 Tou Hou Tod – Deep fried blocks of bean curd, each just big enough to subsume a small matchbox car. Nicely stacked on a plate alongside a carrot flower and a real orchid blossom (surely they must re-use these). The sauce: peanut and plum (like an Indonesian or Malaysian Satay sauce).

After a few minutes the batter on the tofu blocks was getting soggy from the steam. Still a nice soft, warm substrate and a thoroughly efficient vehicle for the sauce.

With a small bottle of sparkling: £12.50 + tip.
I recommend this place.

The uncanny birth of a blog

I've been wanting to do this one for a while: travel around the world (or wherever I happen to be), go to restaurants with numbered menus, then try the same numbered dish at each one and report on it.

Yesterday, Zoë (that's her on the left) and I decided to start. We chose the numbers 4 and 20. Four would probably give us a starter and twenty would put us deeper into the main courses.

We went to Marylebone High Street in London to do some Christmas shopping. The first lunch place we saw was Ping Pong, an outpost of a newish dim sum chain. We went in and looked at the numbered menu. To our shock, the only numbers missing from the menu were numbers 4 and 20.

I'm not kidding. No four. No twenty. What are the chances of that? Do the Chinese have a thing about 4 and 20 the way superstitious westerners do about 13?

We thought about changing our numbers to 2 and 26 and duly ordered these. They weren't very good.

Tim Little convinced me to stick to 4 and 20 and start the blog with the weird story.

Not the official start, but FYI:
Number 2: Chicken dumplings - off-puttingly sweet & gummy
Number 26: Duck Spring Roll with Hoi Sin sauce – flavourless rolls, candy-like hoi sin


To be fair, the steamed dim sum was better at Ping Pong than our two choices. But this is still one of those 'concept' restaurants where more has been invested in the concept than in the food, I'm afraid. It looks great and the menu makes you want almost everything. But the dishes let it down.
Shame because I love Dim Sum.

Sam Taylor-Wood and Jay Jopling were there while we were eating. I tried not to look.