After successfully avoiding eating at Bao for the past couple of years due to not wanting to wait in line and finding other things to eat at Netil Market, I instead made it to Xu. I wanted yum cha and several Sundays ago discovered Xu isn't open that day of the week. The nicely coloured green and brown do make it look nicer than what could be construed as a tacky faux-Chinese interior, and it is helped by the food and attentive service. Interestingly I didn't see any Chinese wait staff despite being in Chinatown and a Taiwanese brand.
My disappointment was slight when I realised the menu is far from yum cha. But at least allayed quickly by the quality of the food.
- Tomato & smoked eel (with soy dried daikon) £5.5 - sweet tomato with a tiny amount of eel in chilli oil;
- Xian bing pan fried dumpling (pork, chilli vinegar dip) £6 - a large fried dumpling with mild savoury mince inside;
- Taro dumpling (Taiwanese sausage) £6 - beautiful thick gelatinous textured skin was the most exciting feature and so good I don't quite remember the filling;
- Chilli egg drop crab (white & brown crab meat with salmon roe, egg drop sauce, red chilli, fermented shrimp & garlic) £16.5 - a refined version of chilli crab with strings of meat mixed in a chilli tomato egg sauce that would be perfect with any kind of noodles or rice;
- Xu's mapo tofu (silken tofu with mapo sauce made using green Sichuan peppercorns from Yunnan) £11.5 - silken tofu on top of regular tofu with a sauce that was more reminscent of salty XO sauce. Different to the usual versions and excellent;
- Mushroom glutinous rice (wrapped in magnolia leaf, salted duck egg yolk) £7 - a surprisingly mild mushroom flavoured rice with a thick stick-in-your-teeth duck egg that wasn't very salty;
- Lardo lard onion rice £3.75 - good flavoured rice with strips of pork fat adding extra savouriness.
The Iberico pork char siu looked fantastic and I would be certain to order that next time.
This was a refined (and more expensive) version of classic dishes spanning the cuisines of China. The cooking and flavours are excellent. You just have to be prepared to pay for the experience.