Taiwan Village, 85 Lillie Road, London SW6 (020 7381 2900).
Feast for two, including wine and service, £70
The menu at Taiwan Village is very long. Curiously, despite its length, it does not contain the most intriguing stuff. The best thing when faced by such a menu is to flip to the inside back cover, where they offer to create a feast for you at £21.50 a head. At this point you will be asked whether you like spicy food, and the only answer is yes. This small, 10-month-old restaurant, tucked around the back of the exhibition halls at Earl's Court in London, specialises in Hunan and Szechwan food, and a serious bit of heat comes with the deal.
It is also a rare find. Most of Britain's Chinese restaurants major on the cooking styles of Canton and Beijing, producing menus which look eerily familiar. The only other place in the capital going big on the chillies is Hunan in Pimlico, where Huang, the chef at Taiwan Village, cooked for many years. Hunan also does surprise menus, and the first time I went I thought it was terrific. The second time it was exactly the same set of dishes, and again the third time ...
The lunchtime we were there, the dining room at Taiwan Village, of which we were the only occupants, was overseen by a lovely, smiley lady who took us through our 13 dishes with remarkable precision given her (self-confessed) eccentric grasp of English. So, to start, a light aromatic fish soup, with chunks of soft white fish and Chinese herbs, that were apparently good for both eye and bone. Next, a plate of lightly battered French beans rustling with fried shards of garlic, chilli and spring onion.
After that, a crisp lettuce leaf containing a sticky, dark stir-fry of finely diced chicken and coriander - the Imperial Jewels - the one to be wrapped about the other. Then some sesame-coated fillets of fish in a dark sweet and sour sauce, followed by salt and pepper king prawns, followed by a saucy spare rib each, the meat falling off the bone.
And so on. It would be impossible to list all the dishes, but there were highlights. There was lamb with three chillies, the latter there for flavour and heat but not to be eaten. There were sauteed ducks' tongues in the Taiwanese style, stir-fried in a dark and pungent sauce, and some extraordinarily tender slices of squid with Chinese celery. Inevitably in a menu this long there was bound to be some repetition, and occasionally we felt we were seeing the same sauce come up with a different protein. The mid-course of crispy duck also struck a banal note amid all this intrigue, but even here it rose above the ordinary on account of home-made pancakes, instead of the bulk-purchased ones that so often rule supreme in London's Chinese restaurants.
Chef Huang had to get off to pick up the kids from school, so we passed on the toffee banana and went instead for scoops of home-made green tea and sesame seed ice cream, the latter more seed than cream. And the bill for all of this plus continuous tea was a ludicrous £52 excluding service, a price (and a selection) you could not match if you tried to order it all yourself from the menu. There's a short wine list with some extraordinary bargains; perhaps that's where you can exercise your right to choose. Otherwise, leave the rest to them.
· Is there anything about restaurants you would like to as Jay Rayner? Email him at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk and read his answers in a special Ask the Experts edition of OM at the end of July.
