With who: Seven of us in total, a mix of the great and the good and the work colleagues
How much: £30 a head for a great range between the seven of us. Go in as big a group as you can, better to order more. Other than that most dishes are in the £8 - £12 range and are large servings.
Come here if: you want hot, proper Chinese cooking, without the rough service and beery boys filling most of the Gerrard Street dives. Great for a (fairly adventurous) team night out.
'Chinese cuisine' is a broad label. To sum up all of the different cuisines of such a vast land under one catch all title is impossible, but it's what most Chinese restaurants in this country have been doing for years, in an attempt to cater for unsophisticated or pedestrian palates. Now, like many Indian, Pakistani and Bengali restaurants, they're starting to throw off their generic roots, and cook more authentically, as people increasingly demand it. Bar Shu was one of the original London proponents of this, to the British palate, new style of Chinese cuisine. It's as far away from gloopy, generic MSG laden shit in a tray as you are going to get.
Sichuan food is well known for its heat. The tiny red peppercorns proudly take the name of the province and appear in most dishes paired with fiery dried chillies.. When done well, the aim isn't macho heat but a level of warmth and gradual tingle, raising heartbeat and seratonin levels, like a lighter, benevolent (through still addictive) form of cocaine.
The restaurant recently closed for refurbishment and is a good looking beast now it has reopened. Several floors high on the corner of Romily and Frith Streets, it's not a small place, but it's well appointed in dark intricately carved wood and splashes of bright colour. It's quiet inside, with a hum rather than a buzz. The staff bustle, but don't push and the tables are evenly spaced. The thick menu does a good job with well taken photography and scary warnings in English, detailing the spice quotient of each dish. You won't struggle if you don't speak Mandarin. These menus are normally the signifier for a dumbed down Westernised menu, not seemingly in this case, though there was an absence of cartilage, gizzard and tripe, the usual signifiers of authenticity in a cuisine that favours texture as much as flavour. We weren't craving utter authenticity though, and mindful of the perils of ordering for seven, we instruct our server to bring us a selection.
There's not much that you'll necessarily recognise from your local takeaway (thankfully) but there are a few of the regional Sichuan dishes that have crept into a wider consciousness, notably Gong Bau (or Kung Po) a flash-fried dish often of chicken (here with prawn), lightly flour dusted and fried with a light marinade, peanuts and the lip numbingly warm Sichuan peppercorns. One of the nicest variants I've had of this dish, and the huge portion easily catered for the seven of us, each getting a couple of the large, sweet shellfish.
Thin sliced pork rolls were served room temperature, toothsome and sweetly piquant in a spicy garlic sauce. Shards of blackened beef, mini hot bites like biltong, came embued with rich chilli oils that even pleased the spice neutral South African in the group, comfortable with this North Chinese take on his national dish. Life seldom being about (sadly) meat alone, we grabbed a favourite of mine, the deep fried green beans with minced pork and ya kai, a preserved (and either absent or innocuous) mustard.
A mild and almost soothing cucumber with speckles of pulled pork was interesting, but relatively unforgettable as anything other than a palate cleanser, but there were only a couple of dishes I wouldn't order again. Water boiled pork slices were possibly the least successful. A slightly acrid broth held mushy porky pieces that had been slow soaked in the water over a period of hours (possibly days), unusual texture for the meat, but not anything I'd return to.
Twice cooked pork belly, another Sichuan classic, comes recommended. The pork belly is boiled in a garlic, ginger and salt marinade before being fine sliced and stir-fried. Ants Climbing a Tree is another famous regional dish, thin rice noodles in the ubiquitous chilli oil, with the 'ants' made up of minced pork. It's good, but not worth the trip alone. Boiled beef slices with 'extremely spicy sauce' was overly apocalyptic in its description and while it was warm, the spice built well within the dish rather than beating you around the head. The flavour of the beef came through, and this, despite being one of the last dishes, vanished quickly.
Bar Shu is definitely a recommendation. Compared to some of its siblings over Shaftesbury Avenue and into Chinatown proper, it's clean, friendly and focussed on delivering decent food rather than turnover. Rolling out into a snowy London night, the warmth and satisfaction from the Sichuan heat stayed with me, though that could have been the booze..
'Chinese cuisine' is a broad label. To sum up all of the different cuisines of such a vast land under one catch all title is impossible, but it's what most Chinese restaurants in this country have been doing for years, in an attempt to cater for unsophisticated or pedestrian palates. Now, like many Indian, Pakistani and Bengali restaurants, they're starting to throw off their generic roots, and cook more authentically, as people increasingly demand it. Bar Shu was one of the original London proponents of this, to the British palate, new style of Chinese cuisine. It's as far away from gloopy, generic MSG laden shit in a tray as you are going to get.
Sichuan food is well known for its heat. The tiny red peppercorns proudly take the name of the province and appear in most dishes paired with fiery dried chillies.. When done well, the aim isn't macho heat but a level of warmth and gradual tingle, raising heartbeat and seratonin levels, like a lighter, benevolent (through still addictive) form of cocaine.
There's not much that you'll necessarily recognise from your local takeaway (thankfully) but there are a few of the regional Sichuan dishes that have crept into a wider consciousness, notably Gong Bau (or Kung Po) a flash-fried dish often of chicken (here with prawn), lightly flour dusted and fried with a light marinade, peanuts and the lip numbingly warm Sichuan peppercorns. One of the nicest variants I've had of this dish, and the huge portion easily catered for the seven of us, each getting a couple of the large, sweet shellfish.
Thin sliced pork rolls were served room temperature, toothsome and sweetly piquant in a spicy garlic sauce. Shards of blackened beef, mini hot bites like biltong, came embued with rich chilli oils that even pleased the spice neutral South African in the group, comfortable with this North Chinese take on his national dish. Life seldom being about (sadly) meat alone, we grabbed a favourite of mine, the deep fried green beans with minced pork and ya kai, a preserved (and either absent or innocuous) mustard.
A mild and almost soothing cucumber with speckles of pulled pork was interesting, but relatively unforgettable as anything other than a palate cleanser, but there were only a couple of dishes I wouldn't order again. Water boiled pork slices were possibly the least successful. A slightly acrid broth held mushy porky pieces that had been slow soaked in the water over a period of hours (possibly days), unusual texture for the meat, but not anything I'd return to.Twice cooked pork belly, another Sichuan classic, comes recommended. The pork belly is boiled in a garlic, ginger and salt marinade before being fine sliced and stir-fried. Ants Climbing a Tree is another famous regional dish, thin rice noodles in the ubiquitous chilli oil, with the 'ants' made up of minced pork. It's good, but not worth the trip alone. Boiled beef slices with 'extremely spicy sauce' was overly apocalyptic in its description and while it was warm, the spice built well within the dish rather than beating you around the head. The flavour of the beef came through, and this, despite being one of the last dishes, vanished quickly.
Bar Shu is definitely a recommendation. Compared to some of its siblings over Shaftesbury Avenue and into Chinatown proper, it's clean, friendly and focussed on delivering decent food rather than turnover. Rolling out into a snowy London night, the warmth and satisfaction from the Sichuan heat stayed with me, though that could have been the booze..
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