Hakkasan
8 Hanway Place, W1 Tel: 020 7907 1888
Cost: about £60 per person for dinner, about £25 for lunch
Who would ever have thought that blue-ish purple light could be so sexy? But then, who ever thought of building a subterranean slate megalith as the premises for a Chinese restaurant? Alan Yau, that’s who. The man who brought us stylish and inexpensive Japanese noodle bars (Wagamama) and equally stylish and inexpensive Thai canteen dining (busaba eathai), now brings us sexy but rather expensive Chinese dining in very stylish surroundings. Besides the aforementioned green-grey slate and the glass panels backlit with that devastating shade of blue-ish purple, Hakkasan makes a positive virtue of its basement location (even the steps down give a tingle of anticipatory excitement), dividing the large space with exquisite black Chinese screens. Table tops exhibit very clever joinery, coming together from unusual angles. The excellent, long bar has been overseen by that nonpareil of London cocktail makers Dick Bradsell, and his team turn out drinks as sharply designed as the lounge bar furniture – more of the aforementioned joinery and leather lounge chairs, embroidered with stylised dragons and peony flowers. As you might gather, there is enough to see here to make a second sighting worthwhile.
Much the same can be said of the food which, to borrow a sporting metaphor, is a menu of two halves. The lunchtime dim sum menu has been widely praised already and I am keen to try it. If it is as good as the dinner menu, it will be memorable. The menu is extensive and executed by a small army of chefs from some of the best Chinese restaurants the Orient has to offer. Steamed Scottish diver scallops with vermicelli in black bean sauce arrive looking as lovely as
Botticelli’s Venus, rising proudly from their shells, their arrival heralded by an incredibly tempting fragrance. Oh, dear, does that sound a bit like food porn? Sorry, it was the scallops talking.
Claypot crab were also delicious but rather slippery and messy to eat, but even more delicious and less messy was the stir-fried Canadian lobster in supreme stock, classically presented with ginger and spring onion, a dish that is delicate, aromatic and robust all at the same time. But it would be handier if the lobster flesh had been loosened from its shell and discreetly returned to it. Other fishy delicacies for future visits will certainly include abalone in spicy sauce, roasted silver cod with Nicolas Feuillette and Chinese honey and stir fried taro scallop with chilli and lime. Those scallops again.
There are a lot of tempting meat dishes and stir fry ostrich with preserved red rice and Shao Hsing wine does live up to its description, cooked rare as befits this bird’s red meat. And if you order the Hakka vermicelli, don’t do as I did and forget that a (very large) bowl of yellow chive consommé will accompany it. In our ignorance, we happily consumed these noodles flavoured with dried shrimp roe and smoked chicken neat. Again, dishes for future consumption include fried organic pork ribs in Valrhona cocoa and steamed poussin with red dates and dried lily flower. Desserts are genuinely exciting, rising to a level few Occidental restaurants could hope to achieve. Witness plum wine jelly wobbling on a base of lychee sorbet, two flavours and two textures wrapping themselves around each other in your mouth. (Oh, dear!) Last but not least, pineapple spring rolls, crisp and crunchy and made even more refreshing with a ginger dipping sauce. This is not cheap Chinese eating by any stretch of the imagination. But the point is that, ultimately Hakkasan really does just that.
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