4 Macclesfield Street, London W1 (020 7287 0288). Meal for two: £40-£60
It began with a craving and ended with garlic breath so powerful it could have floored the cat. I'm not apologising – I've never much liked my cat. Here's what happened: earlier this summer I went to Yank Sing, a huge Chinese restaurant in San Francisco so highly regarded for its dim sum that on Sunday lunchtimes it feels like half the city is queuing for tables. By far the best thing we ate were the xiao long bao, the famed Shanghainese soupy dumplings, the silky skins holding a bolus of minced pork surrounded by hot broth. God knows how they're made – cold when the broth is a solid jelly? – but they are one of the most powerfully comforting food items ever devised by this or any other species.
Back in London I wanted them again. I called my friend David Coulter, a musician who survived seven years in the Pogues. Every restaurant critic needs a musician among their circle. They tour a lot, get bored and hungry, and end up knowing where to find the good stuff. "Go to Leong's Legend in Chinatown," he said. "Plus, they do those pork buns that David Chang flogs for big bucks in New York." Ah yes: slices of long-braised pork belly stuffed inside soft fluffy steamed buns, with greenery and sauce. Chang, who is New York's Asian answer to Gordon Ramsay, only without the people skills, has built a career flogging them. Yum Buns, the street-food outfit which now has a permanent base near Farringdon, has also lovingly ripped them off for London. I didn't know you could get them at Leong's Legend, too.
A few weeks ago I said the pleasing but nose-bleedingly expensive food at Hutong in the Shard was available in other places at a fraction of the cost and without the view. Leong's Legend, which specialises in the genre-crossing food of Taiwan, is one of them. It barely has windows, let alone a view. It's all teahouse hardwood stools and bare tables; the waitresses don't so much provide service as carry stuff while gossiping over each other's phones. All to the good. It makes the food the star.
They offer variants on xiao long bao, but we go for the basic, which brings eight pouches of loveliness for £6. The skins aren't quite as delicate as those in San Francisco, but not far off. The challenge is to eat them at the right temperature. If they cool they'll stick to the steamer's greaseproof paper then tear when you pick them up and leak the stock. That would never do. Eat them too hot and you'll scorch your tongue. David's smart ruse was to pluck them out – by hand; you'll perforate them with chopsticks – and cool them in the saucer of dark vinegar with its julienne of fresh ginger. They are a truly absorbing eating experience.
The pork buns are listed as Taiwanese mini kebabs and are the most fun you can have in Chinatown for £3.30. Stuffed inside the neutral pillow of bun are tangles of pig plus fronds of coriander, the crunch of peanut and a little sugar. Gosh. The menu offers many things designed to scare the children – spicy pork intestines with crispy skins, anyone? – but also the ripe promise of a fresh oyster omelette: sweet salty molluscs and spring onion enclosed in an eggy blanket with a dribble of sweet-sour sauce.
And then the cat-flooring dish of stir-fried chilli crab, Wind Shelter Bay style. Apparently in Wind Shelter Bay they like to fry their crab and cover it with dunes of deep-fried minced garlic, spring onions and red chillies with a little sugar and (not too much) salt. I picked meat from the shells by hand, until my fingertips were salty and sticky, and finished up by spooning the unmissable fried garlic into my mouth, unable to let it go. And then back home I breathed on the cat, and I'm absolutely certain it winced. Leong's Legend is exactly what we all need now and then: a place that satisfies a basic need.
