To celebrate Chinese New Year we wanted to find the best Chinese food the city has to offer.
So we asked Birmingham food guru Lap-fai Lee to take us off the beaten path on a tour of his favourite Chinatown restaurants.
Born in Birmingham to Hong Kong immigrants, Lap grew up in Sparkbrook eating classic Hakka/Cantonese dishes.
He has gained rave reviews for his pop-up restaurants, Stirchley CANeat, Smoke in the City and the new seafood pop-up Stirchley-on-Sea.
Leaving his job as an actuary, Lap kickstarted Peel and Stone bakery before launching a freelance career in food photography, cooking and teaching at Loaf Cookery School and Harborne Food School.
His seven picks for the best Chinese food in Birmingham range from the city’s longest-running Cantonese restaurant to a small bakery tucked away in the Arcadian, with delicate dim sum platters, crispy pork and egg tarts to be sampled.
Lap-fai Lee at Harborne Food School
Chung Ying and Chung Ying Garden
16 – 18 Wrottesley Street and 17 Thorp Street. Tel: 0121 622 5669 and 0121 666 6622.
A venerable institution from a time before there even was an Arcadian Chinatown in Birmingham.
Chung Ying has been in Ladywell Walk for as long as I can remember.
Its sister restaurant, Chung Ying Garden on Thorpe St, arrived later to bolster the popularity of this restaurant dynasty.
“Chung” 中 means China and “Ying” 英 means England.
This is a classic English Chinese restaurant with the focus on Cantonese cuisine.
Let’s get this straight, when we talk about about Chinese food we need to talk about regions.
To lump all Chinese cuisine together is like jamming all European food into one big stockpot.
Cantonese food is what most Western palates have been used to, so it’s no surprise to see westernised classics like sweet and sour pork and crispy shredded duck on the standard menu.
But if you ask for the other menu and look closer you’ll see what real Cantonese food is all about – gorgeous roast meats, delicately prepared seafood, fresh vegetables and subtle braises.
Even better though is that both Chung Yings have the most extensive dim sum menu at lunchtimes. Little plates of delicate morsels that touch the heart.
Order a good selection like you would tapas and have fun exploring the menu.
Chung Ying, Birmingham’s longest-running Cantonese restaurant
Ken Ho
41-43 Hurst Street. Tel: 0121 622 1323.
Next door to the Hippodrome has been a Chinese restaurant for many years.
Even when it was a Japanese restaurant, Tai Pan, it was Chinese run.
Thankfully it no longer has to be in disguise because Ken Ho is unashamedly Cantonese.
With a menu similar to the Chung Yings you may wonder, why bother? But whisper it, it may be my favourite place to Yum Cha 飲茶 in town.
Yum Cha literally means “drink tea” and have a light meal for breakfast or lunch, usually involving dim sum.
As most Chinese restaurants in the UK open at noon, breakfast becomes brunch and for me there’s no better brunch than yum cha.
Ken Ho’s sheet glass frontage floods the compact room with light and you an easily while away a lazy lunch watching the Hurst St crowds buzz by.
The dim sum menu here is smaller than Chung Ying and Chung Ying Garden’s but more refined. What they do here they do really well.
The most amazing liquid gold buns and char siu puffs are the highlights. Please don’t eat them all before I get there.
Ken Ho next to Birmingham Hippodrome
Red & Hot
35 Hurst Street. Tel: 0121 666 6076.
Two doors down from Ken Ho is a different prospect altogether, a Sichuan restaurant.
Ignore what seems to be a small travel agents office as you enter (because that’s exactly what it is) and check out the sleek black decor of the restaurant proper.
You’ll find induction plates embedded into the furniture for what is the regional pastime in Sichuan, eating hotpot.
A cauldron of stock, spicy or plain, bubbles away as you swish wafer thin strips of raw meat into it or dunk fresh seafood and vegetables.
Very popular with the younger mainland Chinese clientele.
For me, though, I like to order from the main menu.
Sichuan cuisine delights in being the most fiery and flavoursome of all.
Spectacular dishes such as Dry Fried Chicken with Chillies where the amount of chilli is easily double that of chicken on the plate emphasise the point.
The buzz of Sichuan pepper numbs the tongue and prepares you for more chilli heat in the classic Mapo tofu.
At first seemingly unrelenting fiery dishes become slowly addictive as you fight your fellow diners for the last scraps on the plate.
You are not in Canton anymore Dorothy.
Red & Hot in Hurst Street
Wah Kee Bakery
Ladywell Walk. Tel: 0121 622 6162.
This is a small, unassuming bakery tucked into Cathay St in the Arcadian Centre, opposite the more garish Café Chino.
They both sell Hong Kong-style egg tarts but only Wah Kee makes them fresh daily in house (except on Wednesdays when they’re closed).
Forget what you think you know about custard tarts, if you catch these at the right time when still warm from the oven then you’ll eat a little piece of perfection.
Don’t expect artisan sourdough or crusty baguettes in this bakery.
Asians – I’m generalising – prefer a softer whiter crumb. Try the delicate filled buns and the puff pastry triangles packed with sweet char siu pork.
My personal favourite is the Japanese karepan, like a savoury doughnut filled with Japanese style curry. Oishi!
Wah Kee Bakery in Birmingham.
Manchester Seafood
Wrottesley Street. Tel: 0121 622 2546.
When Chinese people eat seafood we don’t mess around.
There’s no pan-fried fillet of John Dory with seaweed butter foam perched on a bed of samphire.
No, give me two lobsters from that tank over there, chop them up whilst they’re still twitching, and flash fry them in a screaming hot wok with a mountain of crispy garlic.
Whilst you’re at it, steam a whole turbot, braise an eel, poach prawns, prepare half a dozen crabs and let’s have it all in 15 minutes. Ok? No problem.Manchester Seafood Retail and Restaurant is just that – a seafood shop with a restaurant at the back, opened at the end of December.
Lobsters, crabs, langoustine, eels and various fish are kept alive in tanks. To have seafood this fresh in Birmingham is marvellous.
The windowless dining room makes the seafood experience even more intense.
For the first time in this country I felt a little like I was in one of the seafood towns of Hong Kong.
The menu is tinged mostly Cantonese with splashes of colour from Sichuan in their meat dishes, but they’re less successful.
Stick to the fish (the clue is in the title). In particular the steamed eel in black bean sauce is spectacular and is the best single dish I’ve eaten in Chinatown for a long time.
It’s best to come mob handed to Chinese restaurants like this.
These are big dishes that are meant to be shared family style. Order rice and get stuck in together.
Eat like the Chinese if you want appreciate real Chinese food.
Manchester Seafood in Birmingham’s China Town.
Peach Garden
34 Ladywell Walk. Tel: 0121 666 7502
My ultimate soul food dish is a plate of Cantonese roast meat on fluffy white rice.
In Brum we are blessed with several good specialist roast meat cafes, as good as anything in Hong Kong.
In the dingy alleyway between Chung Ying and the Indoor Market is the best one of all, Peach Garden.
If you’ve ever walked down here then you will have noticed the burnished ducks and sides of crispy pork pressing against the window luring customers in with the promise of fleshy delights.
Peach Garden is basic. Diners know the score. We’re here for the meat – various types of perfectly roasted duck, pork and trays of lurid offal.
Ask for a plate of three roast rice and you’ll get the works: Cantonese style roast duck, crispy skinned belly pork as only the Chinese can do (we’ve had practice as we were the first to domesticate the pig) and sweet sticky char siu BBQ pork on top of a mound of fluffy rice and a few pieces of Chinese leaf to cleanse the palate.
Don’t forget to dress your plate with chilli oil (eat the bits too) and Chinese tea is free.
You’ll pay £7.20 for the best plate of food in town!
Source: http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/