Taste Of Beijing

First impressions were good with the incredibly helpful and charming owner on hand to help navigate us through the main menu and the ‘Chinese’ menu.
As well as Northern Chinese dishes, the menu has a selection of dishes from across China including Sichuan and Cantonese classics. In a mix of Mandarin, Cantonese, English, and drawing pictures, we managed to cobble together a decent spread. In descending order of excellence, we tucked into the following:
Spicy and fragrant casserole this Sichuan style dish consists of 47 ingredients including king prawns, squid, mange tout and lotus root. It had the trademark ma-​la numbing heat and was the definitely the star of the dinner. Although described as a casserole, it was actually a dry dish served in a small wok.
Next up was Beijing-​style BBQ fish topped with dried chillies and Chinese mushrooms. This was from the Chinese menu and the owner described it as their No 1 dish. It was good although I prefer my fish steamed.
Yi Yang Fang pancake, with egg, sesame & coriander a traditional Beijing street snack usually eaten for breakfast. It seemed quite appropriate that we had a pancake as it was Shrove Tuesday !
From the Chinese menu, ‘fresh’ jiaozi boiled dumplings filled with chives, egg & spring onion. Again a classic Beijing dish served with a vinegar dip.
To bulk out the meal we ordered stir fried Chinese kale or gai lan and stir-​fry shredded potato. Spuds are quite commonly used in Northern Chinese cuisine although they were a tad bland here.
From the Chinese menu, zhajiangmian, literally fried bean paste noodles. Full disclosure here, I’m not the biggest fan of this classic Northern Chinese noodle dish even when I’ve had it in Beijing or in Seoul (this is reputedly Korea’s favourite Chinese dish). In theory, julienned veg, minced pork and fried bean paste mixed into noodles should be a winner. But I’ve come to the conclusion that zhajiangmian and I will never be best mates especially when cucumber is the only veg in this version.
The final dish was yu xiang qiezi from the Chinese menu. These are commonly known as fish-​fragrant or sea-​spicy aubergines. This was the low point as they were actually sweet & sour aubergines a poor rendition of a Sichuan classic and the only real bum note.
Admittedly, I have a soft spot for places like these seating capacity could be no more than 25 but I really liked Taste of Beijing. This was largely due to their genuinely charming and helpful service. In particular their willingness to explain what was on the Chinese menu, which made a refreshing change from the mardy sods in Chinatown.
The bill came to £95 including some beers but the owner knocked £10 off the bill (this was a unsolicited discount), which we rounded up to £100 to include a tip decent value for £20/​head.