Zen China

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Groupon recently had a deal where you paid £39 for what was purportedly a £120 six-course meal for two at Zen China. I was looking forward to what sounded like a nice meal at Zen China – the Chinese restaurant which is set within County Hall. The restaurant admittedly has a nice view and with the snow having fallen slightly it was very scenic indeed looking out. The fact I made much of the view looking out of the windows shows just how impressed I was by what was going on inside … which is to say not much at all!

For the six courses you could choose amongst the following options (the ones with asterisks next to it are the ones we decided to eat tonight)

  • Shredded Roast Duck and Vegetable Soup,
  • Classic Beijing Marinated Beef Strips with Spices (*),
  • Duck Pancakes (*),
  • Braised Sea Bass Slices with Spicy Beijing Sauce (*),
  • Sauteed Chicken with Ginger,
  • Red & Green Pepper,
  • Braised Pork Meatballs with Fruity Beijing Barbecue Sauce (*),
  • Sizzling Spicy Beef Slices with Black Beans,
  • King Prawn with Cherry Sauce (*),
  • Braised Chinese Mushroom with Greens,
  • Imperial Fried Rice with Duck Meat (*),
  • Egg Fried Rice,
  • Steamed Rice.

    • By implication, the restaurant values each dish, on average, at £20! Imagine if you’d picked the steamed rice as one of your six courses and were paying full price you’d probably be feeling just a bit ripped off.

    The duck was personally carved up by one of the chefs. They did the trick where they make the pancake for you and as a result instead of getting all of the duck you end up getting only half (at most) of the actual portion. They did come back and serve a bit more of the duck but certainly not the entire portion.

    The rest of the food was disappointing. Each dish, apart from the Imperial Fried Rice, was basically a fried dish. Sure I would expect that for the Beef Strips but certainly not the sea bass and the king prawn. This ended up being basically a sweet and sour dish and then the meatballs were yet another version of a sweet and sour. The rice was hardly memorable.

    The service was friendly with the waitress making lots of small talk with us. However, considering the restaurant was not very full, they didn’t pay too much attention to tables so, for example, getting our waters topped up and getting the bill proved difficult as we could never see where the wait staff were, or could see they were way over the other side of the room (it’s a pretty long room.)

    Even on the groupon deal I didn’t feel Zen China made the most. They certainly didn’t have to fry and overcook everything and the wait staff really could have done with monitoring the room more closely. Not sure I’ll be rushing back over the Zen China in a rush.