Mandarin Kitchen: Queensway, 3rd of October, 2009

There is an inherent problem with English attitudes towards Chinese food: people think takeaway Chinese is good. “Oh, you should try the one near me, it’s great”, “Just give the sweet and sour chicken balls a go”, “I love the free prawn crackers”… Give over. Chinese takeaways are horrendous. Sugary, over-filling, too salty, poor quality and so on and so forth… I won’t keep railing against Chinese takeaways because we’d be here for a while too long. What I will say is there are places you can go which will put into perspective how rubbish Chinese takeaways can be.

Bayswater is one of the places to go for Chinese food in London. It was the original China Town before the franchise (which is what I visualise it as) moved to Soho. There are a few different places to try, notably another branch of Royal China which is always good for dim sum, but for this Saturday lunch, it was never going to be anywhere other than the Mandarin Kitchen.

Famed for their lobster noodles, that’s what we ate. Twice. So that’s two between four. Plus some duck. So that’s about £100 for four on lunch. I don’t care – the lobster noodles here are that good. Comparable to the uber-modern Pearl Liang in Paddington, the lobster is broken up into four pieces and distributed over some finely cooked noodles with thick sauce, slices of ginger and greens, and…no, actually that’s about it. Simplicity is king, especially when it comes to eating something as fine as lobster. And I’ll tell you something else: the art of serving this dish at the table is an exhibition in elegance.

These noodles are excellent. Great for lunch or dinner, I most heartily recommend them. Also, the barbecued duck with pineapple and plum sauce is delectable. There are other areas of the menu that I’m sure I’ll explore one day, but I’ll be surprised if I can ever tear myself away from the lobster noodles.