Telephone: 020 8863 2333
Address: The Golden Palace, 146-150 Station Road, Harrow.
Dim sum lunch for two, including tea and service, £30.
I grew up in Harrow, to the north-west of London, where in the 70s there was just one restaurant of note. It was called the Mad Hatter and was little more than a burger joint, pandering to a 70s vogue for pop art Americana. It probably wasn't up to much but I have fond memories of it, all the same. A quarter of a century later, I assumed that Harrow, though obviously a great place to come from, was less of a place to go to - especially for dinner.
Except in one regard. It has a peculiar history of boasting exceptional Chinese restaurants. A few years ago there was a Chinese place, in the no-man's-land up by the railway bridge, called the Country Club. I don't recall ever going there. It hardly had what you would call physical presence. And then, suddenly, it was discovered by the restaurant critics, and trumpeted as one of the best Chinese restaurants in London. It was a little like discovering that the big bloke with the beard who lived at number 37 was actually Pavarotti.
The Country Club is no more, sadly. But recently, the latest edition of The Good Food Guide arrived and, again, it seems Harrow - my Harrow - is on the map. The only suburban Chinese restaurant to make it into the guide is the Golden Palace on Station Road. It gets a score of three out of 10, relatively high for ethnic restaurants, which always tend to score low, however good they are. It was clearly time for a trip home.
The Palace sits in a scruffy parade of shops just along from what was once the Granada Cinema. On closer inspection, it transpires that this scruffy parade of shops is actually something more of a mini Chinatown. Right next door to the Palace is Mr Ho's Chinese Restaurant. Then there's Sam's Oriental Shop - a Chinese supermarket - and across the road is Mr Ho's Bake House as well as the Chinese Acupuncture Centre. There is also Taste of China, another grand restaurant just along from the Palace which, despite not being in the guide books, looks equally as interesting.
I don't recall a large Chinese population around here when I was growing up, but there is clearly one now. The comfortable but utilitarian dining room at the Palace was more than half-full on a Monday lunchtime and every table, bar one, was Chinese. It is a cliché to say it's a good sign but, hell, it can't be a bad one, can it? I was accompanied by my brother Adam, this being a return trip to the homeland. (You think that an overly grand term to use about Harrow? Not a bit of it. Epic poems have been written about Harrow. Or, if they haven't, I promise to write one, just as soon as I find a good rhyme to go with St Anne's Shopping Centre.)
From noon to 5pm each weekday, only the dim sum menu is on offer. If you can find an excuse to get out there it really is worth the trip. The quality is superb and the value for money awe inspiring. Almost all the dim sum cost £2 and none costs more than £3.50. Our bill came to just £30, including service - and remember, this is the Rayner boys we're talking about here.
We passed on the more outré possibilities - rainbow wine marinated chicken claws, for example - and started with a plate of deep-fried shredded squid, which came in a crisp salty batter, alongside a sweet but not cloying sauce. Fried chive dumplings were crisp little purses of light batter, enclosing an almost liquid centre of meat and herbs in gravy. We decided the crystal scallop dumplings had been named after the curiously translucent dumpling skins which hid chunks of fresh scallop and vegetables that still had a crisp bite. Crab meat and pork dumplings were both succulent and delicious to look at.
For me, the stars of the meal were the deep-fried seaweed rolls: cigars of seafood wrapped in something similar to the nori seaweed used in Japanese cooking, and coated in flakes of batter. They burst with the light aromatics of coriander. I was less keen on the mini-spare ribs in black-bean sauce. They seemed to me rather gristly little cuts of meat but Adam reassured me they were as authentic as the glutinous chicken claws (I tried them once; never again), and he swiftly despatched them.
Alongside a more than serviceable plate of mixed meat noodles, we ordered a bowl each of a seriously sparky tomyem soup, in which floated dense little won ton wrapped in a silky pasta skin. It was sour and chilli hot and, on a cold autumn day, deeply soothing. And, as I say, the bill was piffling. The evening menu is much longer and obviously more pricey but, looking at it, I reckon it would be tough to break £25 a head. Maybe I'll just have to go to back to Harrow, where my parents still live, to find out. Mama look out: your boy's coming home.
Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk.
