For those among us with the appetite for a little suffering but not the taste for the more extreme modes of sating it, there are other sources of sadomasochistic release than being zipped into a Frank Bough Memorial PVC Bodysuit and given a damned good hiding.
The most common SM alternative is, of course, gambling. Fyodor Dostoevsky was the first to observe what is now a truism - that what drives real gamblers isn't the expectation of winning, but the craving for the cathartic self-disgust that comes from losing. And then, for those of us who are enticed by neither the dungeon-dwelling dominatrix nor the seductively spinning roulette wheel, there is dining out in London's Chinatown.
The anecdotes about these grubby, malevolent food factories are plentiful, and separating the sheep of truth from the goats of apocrypha is impossible. It may not be true, for example, that in the 1970s a diner who taunted a waiter with a "Grasshopper, only when you walk the line of wisdom ..." routine from the TV series Kung Fu was instantly and fittingly rewarded with a fatal flying kick to the temple.
What has never been in doubt, however, is that, in that crisscross of Soho streets surrounded by casinos and brothels, you could reliably expect sound punishment from the rudest waiters and waitresses known to humanity - men and women who routinely sneer, scream and even manhandle punters out of the door in the cause of maximising turnover. And this, frankly, has always been Chinatown's primary appeal: the cut-price, substitute SM double bill of being humiliatingly abused while gambling on escaping the premises without a bout of food poisoning.
It seems fair to say, then, that newcomer Haozhan is taking something of a gamble of its own by eschewing Chinatown tradition and serving not only by and large outstanding food, but also daring to do so with charm and warmth.
"This just isn't right," I said to my friend when he arrived. "I've been here for five minutes and there has not been a single dirty look, let alone a screeched, 'What you want?' It isn't natural."
We found ourselves in a long, thin room of strikingly un-Chinatownian cleanliness. With the stone floors, faddish pillar-box lampshades, functional furniture and row of mirrors, it feels like a smart if soulless cafe, and I suffered pangs for the traditional scuffed, filthy carpet that, one assumes, doubles up as consecrated ground to an array of insect, arachnoid and maybe even rodent life forms.
Twice the waiter came over, and twice when we asked for more time, purely to test the reaction, he grinned with delight. Not only that, when finally we did order, from a menu mingling Chinese, Japanese and increasingly voguish Malay influences, he respectfully advised us to replace the chilli squid with chilli quail.
Before that arrived, we worked our way through a pair of average soups - a feckless won ton built on insipid chicken stock, and a far too mannerly hot and sour that offered no hint of the rice wine/sesame oil combo that makes this prince of broths sing - followed by a plate of faultless aromatic duck, elegantly shredded at the table and enlivened by a tangy hoi sun sauce.
The waiter was right about the quail, too - it was glorious. This is not an easy bird to get right, but these two little chaps had been fried to a crisp, greaseless, succulent, savoury finish. The extremely different chilli soft-shell crab was a shade bland, but then this is a dish you order more for luxuriant texture than for potent taste, and again the frying was immaculate.
A short hiatus before the main courses allowed time for a brief moan about the music (a weird, speeded-up mazurka, of all things), and there then arrived a dish we ordered purely out of curiosity and devilment. Wagyu (also known as Kobe) beef is the umbrella name for Japanese breeds of cattle that are reared on, among other nutrients, beer and sake, supposedly to imbue their flesh with a flavour delectable enough to justify the price of £38 per plate. Frankly, they should have given the relevant cow a few beef Oxo cubes as well, because the meat, although unbelievably tender, was virtually tasteless.
Champagne cod, yet another twist on the fabled Nobu black cod, looked beautiful and had a wonderfully light and ethereal tang, while the earthier fish-head noodle soup was a pleasingly salty and pickly broth, and brought to mind the exchange in Polanski's 1974 classic Chinatown in which Jack Nicholson is asked if he minds his fish arriving with head still attached, and replies, "Fine ... so long as you don't serve the chicken that way."
There are many restaurants in this part of town that would serve the chicken that way if they thought it would frighten you into vacating the table, but at Haozhan we could have lingered all afternoon and drawn only indulgent smiles.
"That was an excellent lunch," said my friend, offering me a lift in his cab as we left, but although he was right, I felt strangely unsatisfied and headed for the nearest casino in search of the punishment that Haozhan had so wilfully failed to provide.
Rating: 8/10
Telephone: 020-7434 3838
Address 8 Gerrard Street, London W1
Open All week, Mon-Thur, noon-11.30pm; Fri & Sat, noon-midnight; Sun, noon-10.30pm.
