Dim sum and a curry

As we need some things from the famous Wing Yip Chinese supermarket on the Purley Way, we decide to call in the Tai Tung for dim sum first. As usual it’s pretty busy with a good few Chinese people in there, but we’re lucky to get a table straight away. This is a no-nonsense place, so we just go for the house wine at £13.50.

We look through the dim sum list and tick off our selection on the little lottery ticket. We’ve gone for 7 dishes on this first pass – 3 steamed and 4 fried – plus jasmine tea. The selection is rather heavily prawn based: paper-wrapped prawn, prawn dumpling, prawn and chive dumpling and pork dumplings (with prawn on top).  Also grilled pork dumpling, squid cake (very good), and meat croquette (which B described as a savoury doughnut).  Generally good without being very special.

We’re pretty full, but we go round again with another paper-wrapped prawn and a mixed meat dumplings, which was billed as being spicy, but wasn’t especially, but was tasty and featured a lot of peanuts and the odd prawn. Most of the other dishes are in the outer realms of taste - chicken feet, curried whelks etc. So although we've enjoyed what we had, I doubt we'll be back very soon.

Service has been unusually friendly for a Chinese restaurant with several regulars being greeted warmly, and any questions answered happily.

With two bottles of wine and service, this lot comes to £55 – but you could get away with much less. Definitely somewhere to look in if you’re shopping on the Purley Way. 

 

Visiting friends in Theydon Bois, near Epping Forest, we are taken out to the local Indian restaurant, Indian Ocean. It’s a Saturday night, so we have to go early (6.30pm) and be ready to give the table back at 8.30pm, as it’s so busy and popular. The restaurant has won the “Tiffin Club” award from the House of Commons as the best South Asian restaurant in the UK, so the photos on the wall feature luminaries such as John Bercow and Keith Vaz.

The menu has quite a number of unusual dishes as well as the more common biryanis, baltis and tandooris. A feature is the number of different duck dishes.

Papadoms and Shiraz arrive fairly quickly. Then we select dishes: we’re advised portions are large so there’s no need to order much rice or bread or vegetables.  So B opts out of starters;   I have “Harryali Kebab” - chicken breast pieces with garlic, mint, green chilli and coriander, a rather dodgy green looking creation.  G has samosas, and P an interesting looking salmon tikka.

For mains, I have a lamb dish – toasted lamb strips with fresh green chillies – a pile of meat slapped on the plate, not pretty but nicely spicy. B tries the duck jalfrezi, which though nice meat does not have much in the way of kick it. We also share a pilau rice and a bhindi bhaji, which comes as very thinly sliced okra which have been deep-fried – more of a snack than a vegetable.  G has “Bhaarotiya” - chicken breast stuffed with raisin and garlic spiced mixed vegetables in a spicy sauce  - and P the tandoori mixed grill, which comes with naan and is huge – he can’t finish it.

Our second bottle is a Merlot as they’ve run out of Shiraz. Service has been pretty good, and the owner/manager comes over to chat, as G&P are regulars there. The place is very buzzy, and noisy, with a crowd of locals many of whom knew each other.  G&P generously paid the bill, but as main courses were around £10 each, I’d guess it came to about £70 plus wine.

For such a sleepy little place as Theydon Bois, this is a remarkable restaurant. Not sure I’d say it was the best in the UK, but I should probably bow to the much more extensive experience of Mssrs Bercow and Vaz.