Two contrasting Chinese

We are in South Kensington lunchtime after visiting the Wildlife Photographer of the Year at the Natural History Museum.  I had researched a couple of tapas bars, Casa Brindisa and Apero, but a little café-style place offering dim sum caught our eye – Jia.  We make sure to check they serve alcohol before venturing, and joining a small number of people happily eating their lunch. All the dishes looked very colourful.

The place is small – perhaps 20 covers downstairs and the same upstairs – and very simply decorated, with unusual rectangular tables, and barely any pictures. We order the Tierra Antica Chilean SB at £15.50 – there are other reasonably priced options too – and some jasmine tea.  We’re focussed on the dim sum. Steamed coriander crab dumplings, wasabi prawn dumplings, spicy chicken Su Mai. Fried garlic prawn dumplings, lamb dumplings and honey roasted pork pastry.

Fairly prompt service delivers the fried dishes first, with 3 of each. The pork pastry is good and crispy, and moist; the garlic prawn very garlicky and the lamb tasty too. The steamed dishes arrived soon after – a good hit of wasabi and two prawns in each of the 3 dumplings, fresh tasting coriander with the crab and slightly less than spicy chicken dumplings.  All were hot, colourful and a good size.

We’re quite full, but decide to try the seafood lettuce wrap with our second bottle of wine.  This too is good with plenty of prawns and scallops.

Friendly service – for a Chinese restaurant – and a total of £63, made for a good value, enjoyable lunch.
A week or so later, we’re meeting our friend D for lunch. We’ve seen that Opentable have a 50% off food offer at the Chinese Cricket Club in Blackfriars, so that’s what we go for. It’s located in the Crowne Plaza hotel, so we go into the lounge bar there first, for a reasonably priced bottle of SA Chenin Blanc.  When D arrives we head on in to the restaurant.

There are a few cricket items around at the entrance – pads, bat, balls – but overall there isn’t a great deal of cricketing decoration, despite the logo. There’s a signed bat from an England – Pakistan match and a signed team photo, but that’s about it. Nor is there much Chinese decoration – the overall effect remains that of a corporate hotel restaurant – dull and lacking atmosphere. A real missed opportunity.

Service is attentive and brisk. We order a French Viognier at £26, and some sparkling water.  We decide to start off with the dim sum platter, supplemented by wasabi prawns. The platter is a collection of 4 types of steamed dumplings, with just two of each:  duck, chicken, prawn and scallops.  Nothing special in any of them. The wasabi prawns comes as a plate of 5 good sized prawns in a rather unimpressive, topped with a wasabi mayonnaise – pretty tasteless.
We follow this up with a second order of “slippery chicken” and crispy soft shell crab, supported by Singapore noodles. The chicken is uninspiring – slippery enough though – and the crab without much flavour, mainly batter. Noodles had some good prawns and chicken in though.

We had three bottles of wine, taking the total to £163 including service, and after the £52 saving on food.  This was steep enough for what we had, but without the offer, paying over £200 for 3 people for this would be ridiculous.  A serious disappointment.