The Chinese Cricket Club

You don't get much Chinese food on this website, and I'm sorry about that.  You see, the thing is that, growing up, my folks never really enjoyed it and so I never really got used to eating it.  They were always put off by cheap Chinese takeaways – greasy, gloopy, overly sweetened and packed with monosodium glutamate.  Not ideal.

As with almost all things food related in London, we have moved on a long way since then.  I'm trying to ease my way back in to a cuisine I know virtually nothing about.  So when a friend offered to take me out for dinner and suggested Chinese, I readily agreed.

The Chinese Cricket Club is, I am happy to say, a relatively standard Chinese restaurant.  There's not anything about it that's fancy or over-the-top, like Hutong in the Shard, or the Michelin-ed types like Hakkasan or Yauatcha.  This is standard Chinese restraunteering – with the one exception to the places we'd visit when I was a kid in that it is actually good.

Ravi guided me through the meal, ordering for the pair of us.  We started with dim sum – which, I know, is not an evening dish in China, but then we're not in China, we're in Blackfriars.  

We started with a platter and they are as follows: scallop siu mai (centre, yellow cases topped with orange roe), har gau (white balls), chicken and spinach dumplings (green cases, white insides, top and bottom of basket) and duck dumplings (orange-brown cases, left and right of basket).

Would you believe that this was the first ever dim sum I have had?  It is, actual fact.  I went to Hong Kong a few years ago to visit a friend who had been posted there.  Whilst out there I resolved to go to a dim sum restaurant.  So booked one just before I left – not just any old joint either, a place that had been recommended to me as the best place for dim sum on the island.  My friend and I turned up only to find that they were not serving dim sum because it was night time.  That's how I came to know that dim sum is strictly not an evening thing.

Regardless of when you're meant to eat them, these were lovely.  Served with spicy and sweet sauces, I found they worked almost best on their own, allowing the fresh, clean, subtle flavours to come out properly.

Scallop siu mai.

Chicken and spinach dumpling.

We also had some special king crab steamed dumplings, which Ravi ordered knowing my love of crab.

These were awesome.  Also, one of the nice – and reassuring – things about the restaurant is that, when they came to the table, the waiter instantly recognised that they were overdone and whipped them away, only to come back with freshly made, perfectly cooked examples a little later.  Now, of course, I would rather they were done right the first time, sure – bit it's nice to know that even the wait staff know what they’re about.

For mains we shared five hour braised pork belly and steamed sea bass.  An eclectic mix, but good to have a range.

The pork was divine – soft, melt in the mouth, with a delicious sticky-sweet Chinese marinade.

The sea bass was equally excellent albeit completely different.  It was served with a sharp soy sauce, it was a delightfully balanced dish that felt fresh and light, without losing any of its flavour.

Ravi uses The Chinese Cricket Club as an everyman joint – it's as good for taking out a client as it is for popping out for a meal when working late.  With food this dependable, I can see why.

- GrubsterBoy -

Maxwell Hawker Centre, Singapore

Anyone who's ever been to Singapore will be familiar with the concept of hawker centres.  In fact, lots of people who haven’t been to Singapore will be familiar with hawker centres as well – thanks, in a large part, to the work of Street Feast London / Tweet Up's Hawker House.  But for those visiting Singapore, like myself, for the first time, a visit to a hawker centre is an absolute must.

The hustle and bustle is really quite something as well.  I went relatively early on at lunchtime and already the place was heaving – barely enough room to find a corner of a table to perch at.  Hawker centres are sometimes talked about as if they are the heart of Singapore – and I can see why.  Here you will find all walks of life – families out with kids or grandparents for chicken and rice, Singapore's ultimate comfort food, to high-flying suits, scoffing down noodles and fish balls. 



Maxwell Road's hawker centre is (I am told) amongst the best.  Located in Chinatown, it has a very Chinese-focussed cuisine.  But that's not to say that you won’t find plenty of other foodstuffs on the menu – from Arabic grills to Indian curries - all washed down with copious fresh juices and kopi.

At the nearby Chinatown Heritage Centre I learned that food hawking started in Singapore in the late Nineteenth Century, as the booming populations began to flog (or hawk) their edible wares from the five foot way in front of each shophouse.  However, it wasn't until the mid-Twentieth Century that hawking really exploded in Singapore, with the occupation of the Japanese during the Second World War.  The economy took a nosedive and so, in an effort to scrape together a living somehow, locals began to cook and sell food for very low prices.  Such hawking was eventually formalised into the hawker centres we know and love today.

Today's hawker centres are a little different to how I imagine the first centres looked.  They are big, clean and well run.  Each little booth contains a stovetop or other cooking apparatus and encompasses an entire kitchen – bringing in the fresh produce and turning it into ready-to-eat food. 

The biggest challenge I faced was choosing between the hundreds of offerings.  Eventually, I just had to plump for something.  Following the rule that lots of people = good food, I joined the back of a long queue.  Pretty soon I found myself at the front of that queue, utterly bewildered and unsure what to do.  The friendly chap who ran the booth offered to do my a mixed plate.  I readily accepted. 

What is it all, I hear you cry? Well, here goes: fried noodles; spicy pork sausage (red ringed meat); bean curd (yellow cubes, top of the plate); egg and pork cake (browny-orange cubes, bottom of plate); fish ball (looks a bit like a tater tot, left of the plate); and neck of pork fried in the skin (underneath the whole lot, not shown).  The two sauces are sweet plum (left) and fiercely hot chilli (right) (YUM).  All washed down with a mug of green tea.

I cannot recommend a visit to a hawker centre more highly.  The food is fantastic, the atmosphere electric, and the price unbelievable.  In a city that prides itself on its food but has seemingly no limit to what it's prepared to charge it was fantastic to eat like a prince whilst paying like a pauper.

 - GrubsterBoy - 

Singapore Chilli Crab, Jumbo Seafood

Visiting Singapore, my friend said that there was one thing I absolutely had to do (food-wise, at least) before I left: eat crab, Singapore style.  We headed down to Jumbo Seafood to give it a whirl.

There is something of an ongoing argument that all Singaporeans appear to be engaged in: which is better, chilli crab or pepper crab.  As there were only two of us it would have been impossible to have both, so we really were forced to make a decision – we could only indulge in one.  Given the option I took the very tough decision and plumped for chilli crab.  It was not a decision I would come to regret.

We accompanied our crab with a couple of other bits and pieces from the menu.

First up (and intended as a starter, although the rather sketchy service meant that it actually arrived after the crab) was dragonfruit and lobster salad.  The combination of the tangy fruit and rich meat was fantastic.  I cannot, however, recommend the lashings of mayonnaise that accompanied the dish.  Also, sadly, the lobster meat was bordering on the sparse…

Still, a seriously beautiful looking dish.

We also ordered up a big dish of peeled oatmeal prawns.  These were fantastic.  No two ways about it.  The prawns are coated in a big helping of panko breadcrumbs and desiccated coconut.  This gave them a sweet, dry, crunchy coating to match the succulent, rich shrimp meat inside.  Astrid warned me off ordering the oatmeal prawns in their shells: if you do so, all the pleasure is lost, as you rip off the crunchy coating to get at the meat inside. 

For double the pleasure, by the way, please let me recommend that you take an oatmeal prawn and give it a big dunk in the crab sauce (if eating chilli crab).  It's amazing. 

However, all this is so much stuff: the star of the show is the crab.

Now, you know you're in for a treat when the staff bring you bibs.  This was one of those times.  In fact, bibbing is absolutely essential – throw all your pretentions and shame out the window, you need the bib.  In fact, you need one of those biohazard suits, because this is going to go everywhere.  It's not like eating lobster in Maine, where you risk flicking a drop of butter on your shirt.  No, you're going to get sauce everywhere.  So bib up. 

They’re also pretty amusing. In fact, it wasn't long before a bit of entertainment at bib wearing just turned to all-out absurdity.

Chilli crab is cooked in a big, hearty red sauce.  The crab is trimmed, chopped and chucked in in pieces, so that it cooks in the sauce.  Presumably the brown meat seeps out of the head to mingle with the sauce, which is a rich tomato, garlic, egg and peanut concoction.  Don’t be put off by the moniker either – whilst there's a definite chilli flavour and a kick of heat, it's really quite mild.

I loved this stuff. Absolutely loved it. I mean, I love crab – and, in fact, most shellfish (and all shellfish with legs). This was a revelation. You see, I'm usually one for banishing sauces. Steak tastes better, for instance, without hiding its flavour behind ground peppercorns and cream. Battered cod is not improved by lathering it in mayonnaise, tarragon and pickles, or drowning it in vinegar, or coating it in sugary tomato paste. Sauces should be, at best, a compliment, not a feature.

But here, however, it is the dish. It is its heart and soul. The sauce is every bit as much a feature as the crab. You're ordering sauce, like one might order soup, and being grateful that it comes with beautifully tasty crab meat at the same time. Because the sauce is flipping brilliant and as much part and parcel of the dish as the crustacean it accompanies.

And Astrid was right.  Crab eating – at least, chilli crab eating – is an essential 'must-do' for any foodie visiting Singapore
 

 - GrubsterBoy -

Ceena

Sad news is that a couple of friends of mine who I trained with are leaving work for a bit.  Good news is, they'll both be back next year.

 

So, in order that they remember us and want to come back, we all went for a good old farewell meal at Ceena, just off Ludgate Circus. 

 

Ceena is a Korean restaurant offering a fantastic variety of Korean dishes wither to take away or to be enjoyed from the comfort of a small row of sit-up chairs at the bar.  They also have a tiny private dining room downstairs (which I imagine could just about squeeze nine in at a very uncomfortable pinch). 

 

What they're best known for – and what I understand Korean food is best known for (although I confess to knowing precious little about it) is sizzling bibimbap.  It's a Korean word that means, literally, mixed rice – and that's pretty much what it is.

 

 

Basically, you order up your dish, choosing from an assortment of cooked meats – I went for the barbecue beef, which turned out to be a popular and good choice.  Your meal then comes to you in a gigantic stone pot that has clearly been in the oven for a few hours as it sits there sizzling away throughout your meal, keeping the food hot and effectively cooking the raw egg that comes with it. 

 

The dish itself is a mound of rice, topped with meat, egg, and sauted vegetables.  When it arrives you douse it with gochujang, a kind of red chili paste, and mix it all up like crazy.  The wolf the thing down.

 

 

It was spectacular, no kidding.

 

Also, because it was a special meal, I got to have pudding.  A rare enough treat.

 

What followed was the head chef's recommendation, a dish of hotteok, a small, Korean pancake filled with a brown sugar filling.  The bossman described it as his childhood treat and his absolute favourite thing to have, and I can honestly see why.  What's more, it was beautifully accompanied with green tea and sesame ice creams – both aesthetically stunning and whose savoury flavours were the perfect foil to the sweet pancake.  Washed down with barley tea – a wonderful palate cleanser – this was the perfect end to a meal.

 

 

I am very much hoping, therefore, that when Holly and Claire return next year, we will welcome them back with a return visit…

 

 - GrubsterBoy -