9/10
Telephone 020-7629 9988
Address The Dorchester, Park Lane, London W1
Open All week, lunch, 11am-3.30pm (Sat & Sun 4pm); dinner, 5.30pm-midnight
Price Around £50 a head, plus drinks and service
Wheelchair access and disabled WC
A few years ago, a friend and I toyed with a proposal for a six-part television series entitled Great Jewish Journeys. The King's Cross to Manchester train the day before Passover, an El Al flight to Jerusalem for Rosh Hashanah, the drive from New York City to the Catskills, the Sunday morning expat bagel run from west London to Carmeli's in Golders Green ... this far we came before running out of steam. Now, though, thanks to the Hong Kong entrepreneur David Tang - a man with enough fingers in enough pies to shame an octopus on quality-control duty in the Ginsters factory - I think we're up to five. The latest is the Shabbas (Friday night) trip to the Dorchester, in the basement of which China Tang is to be found.
The journey from the Park Lane entrance to the restaurant is something in itself. From the bouncer at the door via tuxedo-clad gents at the top of the stairs and past younger staff in variously coloured jackets at the restaurant door ... so closely did this welcoming committee resemble a wedding reception line that, for a few seconds, I heard myself wishing a woman I took to be the bride's mother the briefest of waits for a grandchild.
Once inside, you swiftly appreciate Tang's talent for PR. This man should be chief election strategist for a political party, because he brilliantly understands the value of lowering expectations. Everything about this amazingly gaudy room warns you to expect little of the food. The style we might loosely call second Moishe Dynasty, or possibly third, with everything seemingly designed for a market one of us encapsulated as "women with big hair and small husbands". Heavily carpeted, with loads of black lacquer, shiny wood and smart bookcases that look fake but are not, the only authentic touches are the pieces of painted silk arrayed on the walls.
Such a multitude of staff roam the area as to make the stairs seem unattended, while taking into account the solid silver chopsticks and the cut-glass decanters (for soy, rice wine, etc) on each table, and the natural assumption is that Tang has invested so mightily in the fripperies to deflect attention from the cooking.
Then the food starts coming, and it is sensational. "Mr Tang has arranged a starter for you," announced a suit. Oh, was that him at the top of the stairs? "No, sir, Mr Tang is in Cuba." Nice of him to think of us from so far away, we thought, and set about four taster dishes - including fabulous mixed mushrooms and the sweetest barbecued pork with which this Jew has ever ushered in a Sabbath - that instantly established China Tang as a rival to Royal China, Hakkasan and the other usual suspects as the best Chinese in town.
As other dishes began arriving, a party at a balloon-bedecked table struck up Happy Birthday, but with food of this quality, they could have sung a Tim Rice medley without provoking the AK-47-based fantasy traditionally stirred by those lyrics.
Seafood dumplings were madly fresh and supple, stir-fried minced pigeon wrapped in lovingly sculpted lettuce leaves (a sort of iceberg origami) was divine, and "classic steamed fish" proved two majestic fillets of perfectly steamed sea bass (so for £34 they should be average?). One minor misfire, bland sliced lamb with leeks, couldn't begin to take the gloss off an MSG-free banquet to live in the memory, the highlight being the Peking duck. Presented on a platter while still in possession of its neck and head, alluringly crispy, and beautifully carved by a white-gloved waiter, this was as sumptuous and delectable a bird as ever wound up slathered with perfect hoisin sauce in a pancake (the leftovers came later with soft noodles). Almost as good was the "classic fried crisp-skin chicken" (£24), which did exactly what it said on the tin, and did it superbly, too.
The lamb apart, it was difficult to find fault with anything, the high prices being justified by the service alone (it may be a 10-minute walk to Soho, but it still seems a very long way from Chinatown, where it's more a matter of Tong than Tang). Whether the written declaration "Halal menu available" will do much for trade I doubt, but this will be a destination joint for those of other Abrahamic faiths for many years to come.
