Karaoke restaurant in Horseferry Road

We’d been looking for a good Chinese around Victoria for a while, and apart from the expensive options of Grand Imperial at the Grosvenor Hotel, and Ken Lo in Ebury Street, we’d only found A Wong in Wilton Road. So when Google came up with Firecracker in Horseferry Road I thought we’d give it a try.

A Friday night seems convenient, so we head down to the less interesting end of Horseferry Rd, populated mainly with government offices and the hospital. Firecracker is downstairs, and although we are a little early, I’m daunted by the fact there’s no other punters in there – just family.  We’re shown through towards the back and seated at a pleasant enough table. 

The menu is fairly extensive so while we peruse it, we get some edamame beans with sea salt and spicy Thai crackers to go with the bottle of Argentinian Merlot (£19.50) and some Jasmine tea. As you can tell already this is not strictly a Chinese restaurant, but more an oriental fusion place.

Gradually we begin to realise that behind the glass partitions around us are a number of private rooms, which begin to fill up.  In one is clearly a hen party, a second seems to be a birthday party, and a third room fills up with people in Japanese-style fancy dress.  There are display screens in each, and only slowly do I realise that these are not some evening working sessions, but in fact karaoke.  The rooms are well soundproofed, but occasionally as the doors are opened we get a blast of the music from inside – though not enough to make an X-factor judgement.
From the long list of “small plates” and “dim sum” as starters,  we have a scallop siu mai dumpling – which is tasty but a little sticky – and a chicken and kimchi (pickle) gyoza parcel, which is pretty good.   There are loads of other options that appealed too, so maybe going in a group would give you chance to sample more options.

The main restaurant is starting to fill up a bit now too, mainly with couples, but it never gets all that full.

First choice of mains is a ribeye beef in black pepper sauce served in a hot stone pot.  This is a lovely dish, presented so well; melting beef, spicy sauce, green beans and mushrooms. To go with that we have the garlic chilli prawns. These grilled king prawns with garlic and chilli flakes are a little flabby and tasteless, certainly not a match for the beef. To support these mains we have a duck crispy noodle with beansprouts – a reasonable amount of tasty duck in amongst the carbs.

Service is friendly and attentive and the food comes in good time, especially as we are being entertained by the karaoke rooms.  With a couple more glasses of Merlot, the bill comes to £88, perhaps a little high for the food, but fine if you factor in location and experience.