Imperial Treasure, 9 Waterloo Place, London SW1Y 4BE (020 3011 1328). Starters £12-£36. Main courses £18-£100+. Peking Duck £100. Desserts £7.50. Wines from £38
There is an assumption that the more you spend on an experience, the better it will be. I am forever guilty of such a delusion, borne more of hopefulness than stupidity. Few things give the lie to this better than the grinding, laboured, thudding mediocrity of a meal at Imperial Treasure, the London outpost of a gilded Chinese restaurant group which is to joy, what a public enema is to dignity.
It is the manner in which they serve their “signature” Peking duck which most spectacularly deadens the soul, though why anybody would want to sign this beats me. Granted, Peking duck can be a truly marvellous thing. If your only experience of the Chinese way with duck is the aromatic crispy variety, the crowd-pleasing effect achieved via a journey through the deep fat fryer, then consider the joys to come.
Peking duck is aromatic crispy duck’s grown-up sibling, the one that’s been to finishing school and learnt a few manners. Often, it must be ordered in advance, for this is cooking as performance: the bird must be steamed or plunged into boiling water, dried, seasoned and left to hang for 24 hours before being roasted so that the skin becomes like amber glass. And yes, it costs. Here, it’s £100. Ouch.
But look, this is Imperial Treasure. It occupies a huge marbled space just off Pall Mall, with ceilings so high they are hidden in the shadows. It is decorated in sexy strips of textured, golden wood, soft leather and finely chiselled hubris. The website announces they have Michelin stars at their other restaurants in China. Hug yourself with pleasure, sell a kidney, or plunder a former Soviet central Asian state. You might as well. Many of the clientele who can afford this place probably will have done.
For here it comes and oh, what a beauty, shimmering gold and copper and bronze. Do we eat this bird or hang it on the wall? A fully toqued Chinese chef lays it on a board table-side and sets to work, first taking off a thin layer of fatless skin, presented in squares with a bowl of sugar to dip it in. We pluck away daintily with our chopsticks, and ooh and sigh, because this cost £100. The least we can do is look like we are enjoying our act of conspicuous consumption. They bring bamboo steamer baskets of hand-shaped pancakes, alongside shredded spring onions, cucumber and hoisin sauce. All is good. Here are slices of the duck, and yes, it’s delightful: soft meat, crisp skin, the liquorice, soy and caramel kick of the hoisin.
As I eat, I glance at the duck. Hurrah. There is so much more to go. The legs have barely been touched. There’s a ballast of glistening skin and meat around the arse end, and more around its back. Suddenly the chef lays down his blade, picks up the platter, bows and walks off back to the kitchen. Hang on a second. That bird is barely half-cut. I paid a ton for it. And you’re taking it away? At Min Jiang on the top floor of the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington where the dish costs £72 and is also available by the half, the meat returns in a second service, perhaps as a stir fry or in a soup. Here, we are told, it is a pancake filling and nothing else. Lord knows what happens to the rest. Fury, is a £100 half-cut duck.
I should have said something. I should have roared like Brian Blessed, after he’s stubbed a toe. Perhaps if I’d asked for it they’d have returned the rest of the bird, but the whole place is shaped to smother dissent, even of shouty, self-confident sweary bastards like me. It’s designed to make you feel as if they are doing you a favour through gritted teeth. There is crisp linen. There are battalions of heel-clicking waiters, all but one of whom is European; the Chinese are on the other side of the kitchen door. The junior waiters wear high-buttoned collarless jackets, as if they’re dentists about to perform an unanaesthetised extraction. In a way they are.
There is murmured conversation and a sound track of mournful tunes by the fabulous Bill Evans. Normally I adore Evans, but here it’s jazz piano to open a vein to. At one point I head to the loo and an anxious waiter literally chases me through a canyon of hard wood and downlighters shouting anxiously, “Can I help you sir?” I should have invited him to come downstairs and hold it for me; at these prices, he should have agreed.
There is one overtly poor dish: completely underseasoned pieces of chicken breast, crusted with almonds and served with a sickly, cloying lemon syrup, which I would describe as having the flavour profile of supermarket value-range lemon curd, if that were not such an insult to value ranges. Otherwise, the rest is merely adequate. But the pricing for this adequacy is ludicrous. It is nose-bleeding. It is shameless and violent. After the ill will of the meagre duck there really is no way back. Fried rice, with a smattering of chopped shrimp and tiny cubes of pork, is £18. A knot of garlicky morning glory, which in my local greengrocer’s would cost me less than £2, is also £18. Fewer than a dozen king prawns with cashew nuts and dried chillies, one of the more interesting dishes, is £28. A small heap of soy-glazed Iberico pork lardons is £32.
Our waiter asks us if we would like some turbot, at £8 per 100gm. The smallest fish they have, she says, is 1.3kg. So that’s £104. I say no, I would not like some turbot. She suggests some wagyu for £80. I start using my inner monologue voice, the one that says “no thank you” but sounds so much more like “do sod off”. And don’t even think about drowning your sorrows. The cheapest bottle of wine is £38 for a banal muscadet. There are five of us. We have one glass of wine and one beer. The bill is £373. A slab of that is, for what it’s worth, my own money.
Could there ever be justification for this kind of pricing? Yes, of course. There is no reason why Chinese food cannot be raised to gastronomic heights. There is a robust and filigreed Chinese banqueting tradition. It could be fabulous, the very stuff of duck-skin memories. But this swaggering, self-important London debut is not fabulous. It’s ill-judged and ill-timed. Most of all it’s a waste of a nice duck.
News bites
The best price I’ve seen for whole Peking Duck is at Pearl Liang in London’s Paddington, which charges £38. If that doesn’t appeal there’s a lot more to divert from a menu boasting dishes from Sichuan province as well as Cantonese classics. On a recent trip a deep bowl of thinly sliced beef in a pungent broth rolling with chillies and Sichuan peppercorns was a highlight (pearlliang.co.uk).
This month the Jericho Kitchen cooking school just outside Oxford is taking its chefs into Branca Italian restaurant on Walton Street for a series of dinners. This coming Thursday (17 January), it’s A taste of Japanese Winter. On 24 January, it’s Sicilian followed by Thai and Filipino on 31 January. Tickets are £50 to £60 including two glasses of wine (jerichokitchen.co.uk).
Stratford-upon-Avon which, despite its tourist trade, has never been overly blessed with notable eateries is to get a restaurant and bar from chef Mike Robinson, co-owner of the Harwood Arms. The Woodsman will boast a wood-fired oven and an onsite butchery.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
