When it comes to Chinese food, I'm used to getting a cheap take away that always does the job, but doesn't offer much in the way of taste and authenticity. When it came to searching the city for something tasty this Sunday, my friend and I chose to try Ho's (over a more traditional Sunday lunch) since the reviews suggested that this would be a quality experience. When you enter the building, to your left there's the downstairs café and bakery, and upstairs is the restaurant. We ascended the stairs, past the lovely water feature, and on entering I wandered to the bar as I wasn't sure whether we were to wait to be seated.
Within a few seconds a lovely chap seated us, and we perused the lengthy menus. There is so much to choose from, and thankfully they gave us plenty of time to have a proper look, bringing us drinks in the meantime. I opted for green tea, and as opposed to a little cup I got a huge tea pot -which was refreshed during the course of the evening, once the original pot had stewed. That was a lovely touch!
Having chosen to walk in from Headingley, we'd built up a rather large appetite, so picked quite a lot to eat. To start, I had the beef, ginger and spring onion dim sum, we shared the deep fried custard buns, and my friend had the Vietnamese spring rolls. Each dish was freshly cooked, and whilst they didn't arrive together, we were sharing so that was grand. The spring rolls were really interesting, and came in a see through style batter (which I've never tried), and had vermicelli rice noodles inside alongside what we deemed to be chicken and prawn. (We might be wrong.) But they were delicious.
The beef dim sum was amazing -so full of flavour, generous and incredibly moreish. In the little tub there was roughly five pieces or so, there were four spring rolls, and three custard buns, so before we'd even gotten to the mains I was starting to feel full! The custard buns really stole the show, however. I'm not sure if you're meant to order these at the end of a meal, since they're sweet, but they were listed on the dim sum, and I'm not a stickler for process. They were these delicious doughnut style batter buns, with a thick custard-like paste inside, and probably the tastiest little treat I've had in a long while.
The mains came swiftly after our starter plates were cleared, and again, we had generous portions. I chose the crispy sweet chilli beef, my friend had the Cantonese style beef, and we shared an egg fried rice and salt and pepper chips. The sweet chilli sauce was quite sweet and sour style, which I'm not so keen on (I thought it'd be more Thai sweet chilli style) but it was still packed with flavour and really well cooked.
The beef was really interesting: super thin crispy chips of beef, in amongst various bits of veg. The Cantonese beef was incredible -really thin and perfectly cooked strips of beef, in a delicious sauce, with barely an inch of fat on each piece. Amazing! The chips were out of this world. They were utterly crispy, fluffly, not too oily and wonderfully seasoned with salt, pepper and chilli. Don't assume they'd be too spicy either, they were just right. Goldilocks would have been delighted, as was I!
It has to be said that throughout the meal the staff were wonderful. They checked on our meals, made sure we had enough drinks and served us with such warmth and welcome that I'm now certainly a fan of this lovely restaurant. We were asked if we needed forks, and I'm proud to say I managed with my chopsticks throughout, although we had a little giggle over the fact that I may need assistance during the meal. The décor, whilst not over the top or hugely characterful, makes for a pleasant and unobtrusive dine and the whole experience was lovely from start to finish. When the bill arrived, we were pleasantly surprised to find that for all that food, we'd to pay just over £15 each! Wonderful.
Quality, flavour, authenticity and welcome are just a few words that I'd proffer to describe my experience at Ho's, and I shall certainly be back. For a start, just looking at our fellow diner's meals hinted at even more taste yet to be discovered, so I might just ask for recommendations next time to get a hint of something even more delicious. We even had our left overs packed up for us. I highly recommend! read more