Shuang Shuang, 64 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1. No bookings. Meal
for two, including drinks and service: £70-£120
Do not go to Shuang Shuang if you’ve had a couple of drinks. Do not go if you’re on the sort of medication that prohibits operating light machinery. Do not go if you find Ikea instructions for assembling flat-pack furniture irritating, if you have a budget and a minimal grasp of maths, or a low tolerance for salty foods. Certainly do not go if you thought the point of eating out was that somebody else should do the cooking for you, or if you wear glasses but only for reading (we’ll get to that one). It comes down to this: if you find things that complicate life unnecessarily annoying, do not go. Otherwise pop along to Shuang Shuang and have a fabulous time. I just won’t be there with you.
Shuang Shuang occupies a corner site on London’s Shaftesbury Avenue, within the capital’s Chinatown, and is indeed a Chinese restaurant, albeit one brought here by Thai entrepreneurs. At its heart is the hot pot, a bubbling cauldron of augmented stock into which you dip various ingredients. This isn’t new to London. The Sichuan restaurant Bar Shu did one when it first opened, and there was a place on the Charing Cross Road, now closed, where the air always carried the beguiling tang of urea on account of all the peppercorns bubbling away. At both places ingredients for cooking were brought to the table as needed.
Shuang Shuang’s innovation (at least for London) is a Yo Sushi-style conveyor belt, down which trundle 50 different raw ingredients on coloured plates, topped with plastic lids listing cooking times. You sit at the counter with a bisected cauldron set into the work surface before you, allowing for two stocks. You pick off ingredients as they pass, cook them, and then they cost up the plates.
It sounds simple. If only. My dinner felt like an exam. I fear I failed. The menu contains a page of equipment, which runs to seven items, including a temperature control, tongs for putting food into the hotpot, a sieve for taking it out, a Dyson Airblade and a Flymo. I may have made the last two up. Either way, reading this I already have the fear. I fear I will do something wrong.
You are offered ingredients with which to mix a dipping sauce, including sesame butter, red bean curd paste, fresh chilli and a chilli oil. However hard I try, in whatever volume I mix the ingredients, my sauce always tastes the same. Also, as a man of a certain age, I need glasses but only for reading, which means they come on and off. Inevitably, with all this mixing and fiddling, at some point I stick a chilli-dipped finger in my eye. This hurts. So now I’m trying to juggle seven different bits of equipment while blind.
We choose two broths. Given you cannot eat here without ordering a broth it’s slightly odd that they charge for them, instead of wrapping them into the cost elsewhere. Filling the two sides costs £17. The fish pond, sipped off a spoon before it starts to reduce, is a deep, nourishing stock. A small bowl of this bobbing with a little shellfish would be a fine, restorative thing. The Mala, with dried chillies, Sichuan peppercorns and fermented broad beans is more of a cheery punch in the mouth. It makes my scalp sweat. We start with a plate of three raw, shelled prawns. They swim merrily in the fish pond side and come out tasting of fresh, squeaky prawn.
After that the flavours start to merge into each other, a problem I recall from the Bar Shu hot pot experience. There’s a temptation to put all the ingredients – thin slices of raw beef, fish balls, chopped mushrooms, bags of instant noodles of the sort students live off – in both sides. Very quickly everything comes out tasting exactly the same: it’s just a big inelegant hit of salt and chilli. The fish balls taste like the beef balls taste like the mushrooms, which is an achievement of sorts. What’s more, getting yourself fed is an effort. I fall on those instant noodles as a way to sate hunger rather than an appealing part of dinner.
The best things are not from the conveyor belt, but from the snacks menu: golden fritters of scallop and prawn with chilli and fresh herbs, or strips of deep-fried pig ear with heaps of cumin, salt and chilli, both for £4.50. The latter is a fine end for a pig ear. The most enjoyable conveyor belt item is their own prawn ball paste. This, they show us how to prepare, using a spoon to scoop a bolus of the meat into the liquor where it puffs up pleasingly.
I’m grateful they are on hand for this or I wouldn’t have had a clue. Indeed, there are always staff on hand, constantly leaning over our shoulders checking up on us. It’s all very friendly and well meant, but surely we shouldn’t need them. We’re offered a timer, to help us judge cooking times. I decline because that really would turn the whole damn thing into a test. As a result I end up chewing on bows of bean curd with all the texture of shoe leather.
We take refuge in a bottle of wine. There are only a couple of choices of red or white. The cheapest is £27 for a passable Viognier. And so the prices mount up, as they would, given those three prawns are £4.30. After 10 plates and feeling distinctly underfed we call it a day. Some people might enjoy this; they might adore all the admin and ingredient frottage, but those people are not me. Impressively the bill has already reached just shy of £90, for what is positioned as a casual experience.
We pay and wander up the road to the relaunched Vico, now doing strong trade since it dumped the faux fast-food model for a trattoria with table service. We have a fine smokey and charred Romana pizza, layered with salami, a good Caesar salad, and a terrific sundae from their outpost of Gelupo. And that’s Shuang Shuang’s real problem. It is located in a corner of London bloated with eating options, ones where skilled chefs will do the cooking for you, and where dinner is not an assault course.
I’m told a literal translation of Shuang Shuang is “feeling good with a little bit of oh yeah”. Whereas I’m left feeling baffled with a little bit of “Oh my!” and “Oh dear”.
Jay’s news bites
■ I’m probably not meant to confess a Yo Sushi habit, but I do have one. It’s quick and convenient and the food can be good, as long as you stick to one rule: don’t eat the sushi. Both the salt and pepper squid, under piles of sliced fresh red chilli, and the beef teriyaki with garlic, can be great if you can get them made fresh (just ask). I’m also a fan of the crunchy seaweed salad and the roasted aubergine (yosushi.com).
■ Simon Hulstone of the Elephant in Torquay has invited various guest chefs to cook at his restaurant this year. The series starts with Allan Pickett of Piquet, the new London restaurant rapturously received (by me and others) in 2015. Pickett will be cooking a menu of Old Spot pigs’ head, seabass, and lamb three ways (elephantrestaurant.co.uk).
■ Nobody can accuse the Hawksmoor group of not having confidence. In 2017 they’ll be opening one of their steakhouses in New York, a city which likes to think it knows a thing or two about such places. I wish them the best of British (thehawksmoor.com)
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter@jayrayner1@jayrayner1
