The best dim sum in London ?

THE BEST DIM SUM IN LONDON?

I’ve always fancied trying the dim sum at The Royal China Club on Baker Street, as it has always had great reviews, but for one reason or another never seem to have made it.  But today, we’ve been to a wine tasting at Lord’s and the bus is going right past, so now seems to be the time to go for it.

It’s about 3pm on  a Saturday, and the place is pretty busy with elegant looking people.  Although described as the smaller of the two Royal China restaurants on Baker St, it’s still quite large, and there’s no problem getting a table.

There are plenty of staff buzzing around taking orders, so we order Jasmine tea and a bottle of white Burgundy (£25), before settling down to review the extensive dim sum list.  There’s quite a range of things that you wouldn’t normally see in Gerard St, so it takes us a while to decide.  We select 7 or 8 dishes, including pan-fried duck breast, lobster dumplings and spicy crab cakes, as well as more usual steamed dumplings, sui mai and har gau.  The duck and the crab cakes arrive first – both are delicious. The rest of the dishes arrive steadily over the next 10 to 15 minutes, nicely paced, but fast enough to be tempting.  The thing that hits me is that the dumplings actually taste of something!   The dumplings themselves are light rather than chewy, and the fillings have a zing and zest which is remarkably fresh.

It’s starting to thin out a bit now, but we’re ready for another round: more lobster dumpling, sea bass rolls and pork puff, with some lotus leaf rice to bulk things out.  OK, so maybe we didn’t need all the rice, but it was good to have.

The 11 dishes, rice, wine and tea come to £103, plus 15% service, making £120.  That’s very good value for such tasty food, served smoothly and without fuss, in a lively atmosphere.  It’s the first time I’ve felt that dim sum was really tasty, rather than a vehicle for chilli sauce or soy.  We’d tried Yauatcha for my birthday back in January, and though that was good, it was rather poncy, and worked out at £158, so I think it comes second best to RCC.  Glad to have tried it at last – and to have been as impressed as I’d hoped I’d be.