I caught up with a friend for lunch here last Sunday, with a combination of dim sum and their famed xiao long bao. For those unaccustomed to the latter dish, imagine a soft steamed dumpling pinched together barely enclosing a meat filling buoyed in a mouthful of soup. Eating it straight from the steaming basket invites a burning mouth if you’re not careful. The customary way of eating it, is to place a dumpling on the soup spoon, pinching a tiny hole in the dumpling before seasoning with either the dipping sauce they give you or some chilli. This is one of the rare places to serve these dumplings, as you can imagine the hard labour making them, so £5 for eight seemed reasonable enough. The pastry wasn’t as doughy as I had read other reviewers write about, though the soup inside was definitely just as tasty.

The rest of the dim sum dishes we had were fairly sub-standard, considering the other competition all around them in Chinatown. Although each dish is cheap, with most priced at £1.80 or £2.00, the quality really reflects the price. The cheung fun (rice noodle rolls) barely held any filling, and the char xiu bao (steam BBQ pork buns) disappointingly unbalanced with mostly bread, and a bland filling. Considering that this is a Taiwanese place, I would stick to some of the dishes they specialise in, and skip what dim sum dishes you may be tempted by.

I found the atmosphere intriguing as well, where diners sit at rectangular dark wooden slate tables unlike the round white table clothed ones you’d find in restaurants nearby. Almost kitschy decorations in the form of armaments stand next to the staircase, towering over all the diners though obviously not very real.

Considering that we only spent £20 between the two of us, and we walked out of here considerably satisfied, I would come back when you want something a little bit different from the typical offerings of Chinatown.

Thekua.com Rating: 7 out of 10