Excellent Chinese in Soho

We are going to a wine tasting in Tobacco Dock in Wapping with friends T&K, and as tradition demands we are looking for some Asian food afterwards, mid-afternoon. Locally there doesn’t seem to be anywhere open, so some Googling is required.  We’ve never had a great deal of luck in Chinatown itself, so I look a bit further afield and eventually find Yming on the corner of Greek Street and Romilly Street.  

I booked us in for 3.30pm, but they say they need the table back by 5pm. So we decide to leave the tasting earlier, about 2.30pm, and grab a taxi. What we hadn’t allowed for was the Lord Mayor’s Show – many roads were closed, and those that weren’t were very busy. So it is gone 3.15pm by the time we get there anyway.  

There are only two other tables occupied when we arrive, which seemed a bit surprising. So we get a very nice table in the corner by a window - as it's on a corner there are windows on two sides, so it is very light. The atmosphere is very relaxing. The décor is a sort of pale blue/green, with cloths and napkins  - and waiters shirts - to match; even the chopsticks are the same colour. Much nicer than the usual garish red and gold clichés nearby in Gerard Street.  

The menu is huge, though they don’t do dim sum. As well as the usual range of starters and various main course permutations, there is a big list of wrap and of soups. There is also a “special” menu, with dishes recommended by notables such as Matthew Fort and Jay Rayner, and even a dish called Jonathan Miller’s sea bass. The wine list goes up in price quite quickly so we stick to the house Chilean Sauvignon Blanc, and Merlot at £21.  

The waiter comes over before we’ve really had a chance to get to grips with the menu, so as well as the wine we order some prawn crackers to keep us going while we decide.  Though we do take our time, the crackers don’t arrive until after we’ve ordered – though fortunately the wine was prompt! 

For starters we have “Phoenix Tail - big prawns wrapped in bacon” off the special menu, soft shell crab (a must for both B and T), vegetarian spring rolls and steamed meat dumplings. The Phoenix Tail was very good, big as advertised, full of flavour with a good portion of bacon.  The crab was quite good – enough meat rather than all batter as some are – but not a very large portion. The spring rolls (4), were also rather modest size, but the dipping sauce they came with was very interesting.  We’ve eaten all these before the dumplings arrive which was a bit irritating.  But when they come, there are again four in the steamer, very tasty and hot.  

It’s not a long wait for the mains. K chooses the Tibetan garlic lamb. This comes with  peanuts and a good hit of chilli – very succulent too. B goes for the simple steamed prawns with garlic, which are again large and don’t disappoint on the garlic front.  T’s choice is shredded duck, a slightly smaller portion, but again with plenty of chilli. I’m the only one to choose from the special menu, “Double braised pork in Hot Pot” – the one recommended by Fort, Rayner and Jonathan Meades, billed as “soft and tender”.  It certainly is that, a dark deep flavour. There are 7 or 8 large slices of belly pork, that yield to chopsticks easily and melt in the mouth. These guys know what they are talking about.  

We also have boiled rice and Shanghai noodles – quite thick noodles with shredded pork and vegetables, in a tasty, slightly hot sauce.

The first waiter was slightly distant in classic Chinatown style (though not as famously rude as some), but others were more friendly with the more mature guy sorting the bill almost genial. Maybe that’s because with 4 bottles of wine the total was £215 (incl 12.5% service) for the four of us.  

We considered whether it might be a good venue for Christmas and Easter get-togethers. There is a private room downstairs in a rather vile pink and rather close to the toilets – so probably not.  

We are finished eating by 5pm, and the restaurant is now full, with some people having been turned away, but they don’t bother us as we finish off our wine. We were impressed and will pretty certainly go back, but it’s definitely somewhere to book rather than just rock up.