Reaching for the Stars #1 | A Wong (Pimlico, London) | *

The restaurant was recently awarded one Michelin star and situates 5 minutes away from Victoria station. It seats roughly 40 people. While booking is not compulsory, it is certainly a good idea to book at least a week in advance to secure a table. Décor is minimalistic and mostly wooden. Dim red light and jade-coloured napkin rings provided a subtle but classy Chinese twist. The chairs weren’t exactly comfy, though.  

Andrew Wong, the owner of his restaurant A Wong has an unusual background for a chef - he studied social anthropology at LSE after dropping out from Oxford. Before opening his first restaurant in 2013, he traveled for a period in China and studied the art of cuisine at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine. His educational and cultural background clearly reflect on the Canton-and-Sichuan dominant menu, perhaps the two most popular Chinese cuisines in the UK. 

Dim sum, a Cantonese bite-sized delicacy is offered only for lunch, but you can still order a basket of their dimsum during evening service as an appetiser. The a-la-carte dinner menu offers a reasonably-sized mix of appetiser, sharing platters and mains. A 10-course tasting menu, which I don’t think offers very good value, is available at £70 per person. A Wong also offers a Peking duck menu at £60pp which is much more exciting, and perhaps rare in London. 

On my visit, I ordered four appetisers which arrived quickly together. The dim sum platter came with three classical dim sums. Siu mai was filled mostly with shrimp, which is a bit different from the typical pork-and-shrimp mix. The taste was fine but the pork scratching on top was left me puzzled for a good moment. Another equally disappointing modern twist which I have tried very hard to appreciate was the foam on the har gau. It didn’t help that the dumpling itself was barely passable. 

Xiao long bao is one of my favourite dim sums and it is typically served alongside some ginger-infused black vinegar. In A Wong, the condiment is mixed into the dumplings which I do not object. However, the acidity was too weak for my liking. I was quite disappointed with their dim sums. 

Other appetisers were slightly better. Chengdu street tofu was silky and creamy and went very well with the mild soy chilli sauce. The 63 degree ‘tea egg’ was lovely and I hope I could get more of. Having said that, it’s arguable whether this and the superfluous bed of filo warrant the £6.5 price tag. 

The pickled cucumber is a staple home-cooking dish that I really love and I usually can finish a bowl of white rice just with this.  but the matchstick-sized cucumber was absolutely drowned in the black vinegar-based sauce. A little something in me dies every time I see the sad, soggy cucumber that has lost all its crunch from the picture till this date.

Fortunately, the main dishes were all very good and have salvaged much of lost respect. Cantonese Barbecued pork was tender and one of the best that I’ve ever had, maybe even better than The Eight in Grand Lisboa, the only Michelin 3 star restaurant in Macau. The pork jerky is also something not to be forgotten. 

Crispy chilli beef was well executed and is balanced by the pickled carrots but the lack of heat was slightly bothering. The Anhui-inspired fermented fish belly was also perfectly cooked. A small cup of fermented fish sauce was given to go with the lovely, underappreciated cut of mandarin fish.  

The mellow poached meringue mixed well with the granite and sorbet and the fried lotus roots was a nice touch. At £10 a pop, however, I would pick the amazing desserts at Yauatcha over this every day. 

The bill came to £46 a head with a glass of white wine. Service was acceptable but nothing noteworthy. It was a good experience overall and A Wong has proven itself to be one of the better Chinese restaurants in the UK. But does it deserve a Michelin star? I have reservations about this.   

★★★☆☆ – It’s OK.