Dragon Castle, 114 Walworth road, London SE17 (020 7277 3388).
Meal for two, £75. Dim sum available
There are many things I would not be surprised to get in the Elephant and Castle: run over, say, or a nasty, suppurating skin condition. The Elephant and Castle is somewhere you go en route to somewhere else, unless you live there, in which case you are also trying to get to somewhere else. A few weeks ago, when I made some disobliging comments about Stow-on-the Wold, the town's mayor wrote to complain. I don't expect anybody to write in defence of the current Elephant. Even the council plans to knock it down.
Yes, I know there's a good pizzeria there, the Castello. And I've heard intriguing things about a couple of the Latin American places. But I would need a better reason to go to the Elephant for dinner. Dragon Castle is a better reason. I first heard about it from a work colleague who likes to live dangerously. He cycles home every day through the Elephant. 'A massive Chinese place is opening just off the roundabout,' he said, wide-eyed.
I assumed it was a car exhaust hallucination and sent him back to check. Yes, he said the next day, it's definitely there.
And it was. Dragon Castle occupies a ground-floor space in the kind of office block to which Stalin's planners would have been proud to put their name. There is a huge set of red ceremonial double doors, and behind that an ornamental gold-fish pond, containing the only wildlife in the borough. The dining room is vast, and understated by Chinese standards; an Asiatic tassel here, a little sparkle there. What was most striking was the mixed crowd: southeast London black families, white couples, and then tables full of London's Chinese (including the owner of Bar Shu, in for a second time). It may be a cliche, but Chinese people in a Chinese restaurant is usually a very good sign.
So it proved, though you have to be determined to find out why. If you are not Chinese they will bring you the standard menu, which is full of crispy duck, spring rolls, prawn toast and other stuff which could anaesthetise you at the table. I'm sure they do that well enough. But ask for the other menu, and be persistent. It's where the good gear is. Try their sweet and salty poularde clams, stir fried with chilli, a relative steal at £8.50 for a generous plateful of bright and fresh seafood. Strips of chewy razor clam with golden crushed garlic was less of a bargain, but still spoke of an attention to fresh ingredients. We also liked a plate of thinly sliced pork hock, slicked with a deep, dark, pungent sauce of chillified soy, which made our lips ache.
Of the mains, I would direct you swiftly to the braises and hotpots. Double-cooked lamb shank tumbled from the bone as though it had just been waiting for an excuse to give up holding on. The meat tasted properly of baa lamb, and was mixed with a rich silky broth to produce a big, palate-clinging flavour. Better than that was a hotpot of pork, eel and whole braised garlic cloves. We sucked the dense fish from the bones and chomped our way through the garlic without a thought for the people we would later be breathing over.
As we plundered the hotpot our waiter said, 'Are you Italian?' I told him I wasn't. 'But you eat eel,' he said, amazed. 'English people don't eat eel.' If this is true it is a crying shame, but I suspect there is also a reticence on the part of Chinese restaurateurs to put the more gutsy ingredients upfront for fear of terrifying them. So please order more eel. Our one stir-fry, king prawns with dry scallop, was unremarkable save for the freshness and clarity of the ingredients, and the presence of in-season asparagus. For carbs we had some broad, silky ribbons of fried ho fun with Chinese chives and bean sprouts with that smoky, oily flavour which comes from the very hottest part of a wok. The one downside came when they brought an unitemised bill. Why is it only Chinese places think it's OK to do this? They then asked if we'd like to leave a tip on the chip-and-pin machine when service had already been included. Still, I can embarrass them into sorting those problems out.
The fact remains that Dragon Castle is one of the best Cantonese restaurants I have tried in London in a very long time. And it's in the Elephant and Castle. Think of it as a genuine diamond in the rough...
