Four Seasons - Chinatown, London

Our last leisurely Friday lunch took us to Four Seasons for duck and rice. I got the 2 meat and rice combo for £6.50 with roast duck and soy chicken as my choice of meats. The duck was good as usual but the chicken was pretty awful. Verging on tough and dry, it was certainly not up to Four Seasons standard. If that wasn't bad enough, the ginger and spring onion sauce that accompanied the chicken (usually one of the highlights of getting soy chicken) was tongue numbingly salty and looked like something they had mixed up the week before.

To balance the heaviness of the meat we got two portions of vegetables. Stir fried ginger for crunch and dau miu (my absolute all time favourite) for deliciousness.

Four Seasons Chinese
12 Gerrard Street, Soho, London, W1D 5PR

Soba with Roast Duck

As Stuart couldn't join the little family get together dinner over the weekend at Gold Mine, I bought back a roast duck for him ... well... for us :) I had a little bit too (alright quite a lot and then some as I sneaked in a few pieces whilst I was in the kitchen and he wasn't looking!). I did ask for a whole uncut duck but even though the waitress nodded and repeated the order, I was still handed a neatly cut up bird. Oh just as well...I don't own a cleaver and trying to chop up a duck "Chinese style" would have been a nightmare.

It made for an easy Monday night dinner with Japanese soba noodles and some boiled choy sum. I mixed the noodles with some of the sauce that came with the duck. A dark, sweet and sticky sauce, which never makes an appearance in the restaurant as the ducks get a good douse of soy sauce mixed in the the natural duck fat. Yum! The sweet sauce did, however, make a nice mixing sauce for the noodles. I heated the pieces of duck in the over wrapped in foil and once the meat was hot, I unwrapped the foil and switched on the grill to crisp up the skin. It worked wonderfully well, the duck skin was even crisper than what is served in the restaurant. Ohhh.... and the fat that dripped out! A dieter's nightmare :) I have to admit that I did sneak a tablespoon or two of the fat back into the noodles. Naughty, naughty! But oh-so-delicious!

Bank Holiday - Gold Mine, Bayswater

As we were already in the Bayswater/Notting Hill area, Nadia and I (joined by two hungry boys, Stuart and SW)decided to have a roast duck dinner. Usually I would head for Four Seasons, where their roast duck is known far and wide, but a few months ago I discovered Gold Mine. Opened by an ex-chef from Four Seasons, Gold Mine is only a few doors down from Four Seasons and I actually prefer the food here.



A whole de-boned roast duck was just as good as Four Seasons. Crispy skin with a melt-in-the-mouth layer of fat underneath and lovely tender, moist meat with no bones to fiddle with :) Beneath the meat lay a good amount of boiled Chinese leaf - yay! The dish was topped with a good ladle-ful of roast duck gravy (mostly soy sauce), which was excellent over hot rice.



Stir fried beef with XO sauce. XO is actually a spicy seafood sauce and nothing to do with extra fine, aged cognac :) The dish was good but with most beef stir fries in Chinese restaurants, the meat was slightly chewy, the sign of too much tenderizer on a cheaper cut of meat. I guess I've become so accustomed to this, it's hardly something to complain about.



Braised tofu with minced pork in a hotpot. Made with deep fried pieces of Japanese egg tofu and mince pork in a thick corn starch sauce. I detected some miso used in the sauce, perhaps I'm wrong.



Our obligatory vegetable, braised aubergine with minced pork in a hotpot was really delicious. Fried pieces of aubergine with mince pork, chili , garlic in lots of oil. Yum!

The verdict?
Two thumbs up from everyone. I would have liked some green vegetables but with the two hungry boys demanding meat, that is what we had. All the dish were really good but I liked the beef the least. With our tummies full and smiles on our faces, we each left with £13 less in our wallets.

Gold Mine
102 Queensway, London W2 3RR