Bright Courtyard - Dim Sum

Dim Sum is a form of Chinese cuisine where food is prepared in individual bite sized portions served in steamer baskets or plates in portions of 3 or 4. Traditionally, this was not supposed to form a meal, and was eaten along with tea.

In the early to mid 1980s until say the mid 1990s rich Indians [who at that time were almost always non vegetarian] used to flock to the Royal China Restaurant at either Queensway or St. Johns Wood in London and eat Dim Sum at lunch time. Not only were Rich Indians in the 1990s non vegetarian but their range of travel was mainly to England and the Continent. The Middle East, Far East and America were generally not visited. America had some visits from parents whose children were graduating from some US University. No restaurant in India served this, so eating these delicious morsels was a really exotic treat for us Indians. Soon, more and more restaurants in London started to serve Dim Sum, but Royal China remained the favourite. America, by and large, has no clue as to Dim Sum so eating it there was impossible.

Soon, like everything, the Dim Sum scene changed and so did the Rich Indian. Today a Rich Indian is vegetarian, travels to the Middle East, Bangkok, Singapore [especially if he has children as it’s a child friendly place] and the US is very much part of a Rich Indians itinerary. Royal China has opened in India and boasts 2 branches in Mumbai – Bandra and VT. Hakkasan and Yauatcha both the new Rich Indians hangouts, have also opened in Mumbai. Every Indian Chinese restaurant in Mumbai serves Dim Sum, obviously in 3 versions, chicken, fish and vegetarian, anything else is too threatening. Now, horror of horrors, Dim Sum is served in India even at dinner. However, to eat good Dim Sum you still have to go to London. Royal China still serves excellent Dim Sum though the St. Johns Wood branch has shut. The Royal China Club, the more upmarket restaurant serves top class Dim Sum. We had some Dim Sum at the Bright Courtyard which is fast gaining a reputation as an excellent Chinese Restaurant.

Dim Sum by and large can be classified by cooking in neat categories – steamed, fried and baked. Dumplings called `Gao’ are normally steamed. The outer covering is rice or wheat flour sheets. Common forms of `Gao’ are `Sui Mai’ with a bland shrimp or chicken or prawn filling. A Prawn and Chive dumpling is also very popular.  `Bao’ are made of wheat flour often with yeast. These are either steamed or baked and the skins are much more substantial therefore requiring the inside to be more robustly flavoured with fillings like Sweet Char Sui Pork or Sweet Bean Pastes. A Rice Noodle covering is another category of Dim Sum and is called `Cheung Fun’. Baked Dim Sum is one where the outside is Puff Pastry. There are also several other types, too numerous to bore you with.

At Bright Courtyard we ordered a fair selection of Dim Sum which we washed down with some Chinese Green Tea. The light was good and the photographs have come thru well, even if I say so myself. 

Baked BBQ Pork Puffs

Shanghai Dumplings

Beef Cheung Fun

BBQ Duck and Pumpkin Dumpling

Minced Chicken Sui Mai

Pan Fried Peking Gyozas

London - more stray thoughts and random observations

A few more stray thoughts and random observations on London.

We Indians have our collective nanny i.e. our Government allegedly headed by Dr. Manmohan Singh, whose integrity and honesty is without question. All that our nanny does is all for our good, such as for example, messing up our investment climate and allowing the Rupee to slide to Rs 54 to a Dollar, and, waffling about FDI in retail, and, changing taxes retrospectively and banning dance bars. All this is good. But this post is about London not India.

Well, in the UK the nanny likes to tell people what is good and bad for them. Apparently people drink too much in the UK. So they have formulated a huge awareness campaign telling people, sorry educating people, how much they should drink. It has been decided that a man should ideally not drink more than 3-4 units of alcohol per day. To help you know how much is a unit; the nanny has sort of dictated that all alcohol glasses should have marks showing how many units of alcohol the glass contains. A pint of Guinness contains 2.3 units. So I should not drink more than 2, better still 1 pint and a ½ pint is ideal. Ridiculous! If you are 18 you should have control of your life. No nanny required.

Harrods is a most astounding store. Originally it was a very British store, which was bought by Mohamed Al Fayed in 1985 and sold by him in 2010 to the Qatari Sovereign Fund. The store is huge and literally has everything inside. People believe the store is expensive, but I do not think so. The Queen and me have lots of free time in London and spend a lot of it buying cooking equipment, be it knives, pans and other gadgets. We do a lot of comparative shopping, wandering thru the `Kitchen’ sections of not only Harrods but Divertimenti, Selfridges, John Lewis and smaller independent stores making notes of prices. More often than not Harrods has the widest range, most knowledgeable salesmen and prices that are the same if not a tad lower than other stores. The bigger difference is that Harrods will normally not stock a cheaper brand, so you will not find an Antler suitcase at Harrods but will certainly find Samsonites and Rimowa. These suitcases cost a lot of money, but that does not make the store expensive. Anyway, the point I wanted to make before going out on a limb defending Harrods is that the brand is so strong that I often see people wanting to be photographed under the Harrods sign.

London is known for its theatre. The Musicals are very popular and people make it a point to see one when they are in London. It is a very different experience seeing a play in London. The theatres are quite imposing, the quality of acting, music and dance is high and in case it’s a musical you have a live orchestra playing in the theatre. Its big budget, it’s expensive and it’s great fun. We went to see `The Sunshine Boys’ a Neil Simon play that stars Danny DeVito. A movie version with Walter Matthau and George Burns is something old timers may recall. The theatre is located in the famous Savoy Hotel. The play was absolutely top class. This runs for only 12 weeks so if you are in London till the middle of July, do make an effort and see this play.

To continue on the theatre thyme, we went to yet another play another comedy `What The Butler Saw’ starring the hilarious Omid Djalili. This play is a farce. Not as good as Sunshine Boys.

After a most disappointing stretch of gastronomy in Dublin, we needed some charging up. What better place to do this than at the very nice Pierre Koffmann Restaurant at the Berkeley. A reservation was made at 8 pm to allow for any flight delays as we would be arriving from Dublin just a few hours before dinner. Once our telephone number was noted by the receptionist, obviously the restaurant computer threw up all our details. I have written about this in an earlier blog. Our reservation was made and we looked forward to some good food.

This was our third visit here. The restaurant was very full. We had a great meal once again. We got an Amuse Bouche of a hot Vichyssoise, which is unusual. The bread basket has the most amazing Garlic Brioche which as flaky on the outside and wonderfully soft inside.

Vichyssoise

For starters HRH the Queen had the special for the day, a Lobster Ravioli and I had the Provencal Fish Soup with Garlic Aioli. The Lobster Ravioli was fantastic, one large Ravioli absolutely stuffed full of beautifully cooked Lobster. My soup was also excellent, fragrant and tasty, yum yum. For mains HRH the Queen had Tete De Veau with Sauce Gribiche. This is a sort of Terrine made with the head of a calf with crisp fried brains. Sauce Gribice is a Mayonnaise based sauce with chopped boiled egg, Capers, Parsley, and Cornichons. It’s a classic French dish and this one was well done. I had Pied De Cochon Tante Claire which is an invention of Pierre Koffmann. Excellent.  To finish I had a Lemon Tart, once again good. An excellent meal and along with Le Gavroche this is one of our favourite restaurants in the world.

Provencal Fish Soup with Garlic Aioli

Lobster Ravioli

The amazing Pied De Cochon Tante Claire

Tete De Veau with Sauce Gribiche

O'Neills Bar & Restaurant - Dublin

Dinner three in Dublin. Third time lucky is the phrase, yes, it’s correct. We have been let down by the fancier Dublin restaurants so we thought why not downscale even more and eat at a pub. To be sure we were going to the correct place, in our usual obsessive way, we check with 3 different Concierges on duty at the Hotel. Every one recommended O’Neill’s as their first choice. One Concierge casually mentioned O’Neill’s is basically a carvery and most food is served that way. So on to O’Neill’s it was.

O’Neill’s is a short walk away from the Hotel. It’s a very large Pub seating almost 400 people in many levels. You cannot get an idea of its size as the Pub has lots of nooks and crannies and passages leading to more seating areas, labyrinth would be an appropriate word to describe its interiors. It’s much like Khyber in Bombay. I must say that you do not realise that there are as many as 400 other people in the place. There are several bars drink dispensers all over the place each serving an area. A band plays Irish music every night from 9.30 pm onwards. At the lowest level was the food.

There was a huge selection of liquor on offer. Several brands of each category viz: 3 types of Stout on tap plus many others in bottles, two types of Cider on tap and bottles and so on and so forth. To start, I had Stout, not Guinness but an O’Hara, which I quite liked. HRH the Queen had a pint of Cider. Once that was done, I got myself another Stout and taking advantage of the wide range of Irish Whiskeys available, I chose a small – 35 ml - shot each, of three mid priced Whiskeys with a cube of ice in each glass for HRH the Queen to try. Each was different, each was reasonably good, and each was drunk. Now it was time for dinner.

As I mentioned, O’Neill’s is a carvery. On the lowest level was the food. A large steam table in which was the various foods on offer. A carvery is an establishment where cooked meat is freshly sliced to order and served with a selection of vegetables which the diner chooses. The food is served cafeteria style which means you pay per plate, however you can load your plate as much or as little as you like with the vegetables, the meat being carved and served to you in a limited portion. HRH the Queen had a traditional Irish Stew of Lamb with a side of red cabbage and mashed potato. I had a slice of boiled ham with red & green cabbage with some roast potato all doused in a gravy. You carried your tray of food back up to your table to eat. Both of us were happy bunnies. The food was hot, tasty and robust and rustic. No short-changing, no mis-decription no inadequate seasoning. All this at a super cheap price of about 12 euro a plate. Thank God for O’Neill’s. As we were leaving, the band was setting up.

Irish Lamb Stew

Boiled Ham

The next morning we had to leave for London. It would be lunch time when we would be in the aircraft. We both do not eat a heavy lunch at all. A simple soup or sandwich is about what we can handle. As we were walking for the last time on Grafton Street we saw several pubs offering a `Full Irish’ breakfast – sausages, bacon, eggs, black or white pudding, mushrooms, potato in some form, tomato, baked beans & tea was a bit much for us. So we popped into the nearby Burger King and got ourselves a Sausage, Egg & Cheese Bap and a Bacon, Egg & Cheese Bap with an order of hash brown potato. I could not believe how cheap it was. The Sausage, Egg & Cheese Bap was only 1 Euro. All in all in some 7 Euro we had a most satisfying, clean, hygienic and freshly made breakfast that would hold us thru to the evening.

A Bap

Opened with the egg

Unbelievable prices

Thus ended our stay in Dublin. All in all, disappointing, both as far as what the city had to offer as well as gastronomically.