After a wine tasting at Vintner's Hall - a lovely venue - we've decided to try out a a Chinese, Kirin's in College Hill. Clearly our taste buds and discrimination may not have been quite up to scratch, but it was a remarkably good venue.
The main room is slightly sunken from the road, but warm and welcoming. There must be 50 covers in the main room - there are two private dining rooms complete with karaoke systems! Several of the larger tables are occupied by groups of 8 or more. We are given a table more or less in the middle of the restaurant which offered good views of what was going on, and sensibly distanced from other tables.
For starters, we order the grilled pork dumplings and the salt and chilli soft-shell crab. The crab is described as "hot" on the menu and there are indeed loads of chilli pieces, and some smaller chilli flakes. But again although there was a good amount of crab-meat compared with some, there was not a great deal of flavour. The dumplings were fine, with light soy sauce.
As we have our starters, we watch with amazement a huge dish placed at the next table, for three. Our first main course was prawns with scallops in XO sauce. This is a very fresh and light dish with a good amount of seafood. Our second dish was sauteed sliced beef in sizzling chilli oil - a huge dish like the table next door., there's no way we would ever make much impact on that. It's billed as "very hot", but it's not too over the top. The beef is tender and lean. We also have an egg-fried rice.
Service has been prompt but largely anonymous. With a bottle of Chenin Blanc at £27 and some sparkling water, the bill comes to over £120 including 12.5% service which is a little surprising. We do however take away a large portion of the beef and at least half of the rice. It was also quite a classy place.
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