I'm sorry to disrespect half of my ancestors (well, maybe more depending on how racist the European ones were), but I rarely eat Chinese food these days, and even if I do, I tend to go more for Szechuan style. Whilst there are still places I like in London (such as Y Ming), I find a lot of the Cantonese-style places are a bit by-the-numbers...a decent meal, although nothing spectacular or particularly memorable. Perhaps my tastebuds have evolved, but I feel like things were better back in the heydays of restaurants like Fung Shing and The Mayflower, or maybe I'm just imitating my parents who claim that everything used to be better 20 years ago - I'm rather less trusting of my memory than they are. I can safely put Toa Kitchen in a box with Royal China and Phoenix Palace - decent quality food, large selections of dishes, pretty pricey, and unspectacular.
I came here for dinner the other day - my mum got there about 20 minutes before me and apparently the staff didn't even ask if she wanted a drink. Overall, the service wasn't bad and the guy answered all my mum's questions (my mum is very particular about seafood. Where the seafood comes from, how big is it, is it frozen, etc. etc.) but not particularly warm. Whatever, not really that important to me. We had hot and sour soups and a large scallop with garlic and vermicelli for starter. The soup was good, well balanced flavour and not washed out like it can be in many places - always a good way to start the meal. The scallop was tasty - well put together on the shell, tasty flesh, good sauce. Also not worth £10. Like...yeah, scallops aren't cheap but it was quite the markup whichever way you cut it.
For mains, we had pea shoots in garlic sauce, prawns in salted egg yolk, and a crispy pork and tofu hotpot. The pea shoots were good, I wish more places did it (again, £10 for a plate of veggies is pretty steep). The prawn dish was one of the better ones I've had in the UK - I don't like the egg to be slathered on too thickly as it can be a bit too rich and sickly. Here, there was just the right amount of coating and the prawns were big to boot. Here's hoping they weren't from Thailand. I suspected the pork/tofu hotpot was a means of getting rid of yesterday's siew yuk and...well, I was right. Not a bad dish, but you could tell the pork was a little past its best and it was a bit on the bland side. Not horrible, but I didn't feel like finishing it.
In all, there was a lot of food and I probably could've swapped out a main for a starter. We did pick some rather premium items but £35 a head was a bit steep (including one glass of wine), so I probably wouldn't come back here for dinner unless I happened to be in the area. That said, I do want to try their dim sum. Overall, it does what it does well and was pretty much exactly how I expected. And really, the price isn't out of line with the aforementioned places, so I s'pose I can forgive them. read more