Much anticipation ensued when we spotted a newly-opened Chinese restaurant around the corner from my work earlier this year. Brick Lane has more restaurants than you could shake a stick at, but has lacked a decent Chinese for a long time. The next nearest lunchtime option is Noodle King; about the best thing I can say about this place is that their servings are significantly larger than a Pot Noodle.

Our excitement increased when we spotted Red Bar’s menu—full of Szechuan and north-eastern Chinese specialities, many of which we recognised from the excellent Gourmet San (further down Bethnal Green road, but not open for lunch). Now Szechuan food excites me—it’s spicier and more intensely flavoured than the Cantonese-style food which most Chinese restaurants in London serve. What’s more, as a less well-known and spicier option, it’s usually prepared to a higher standard for more of a Chinese clientele.

My excitement was soon tempered, though, by a number of failed attempts to eat there at lunch. Red Bar’s opening hours can be a little sporadic, and it was a while until we got to eat there.

Boy, was it worth the wait.

The first thing we tried—Yu-Hsiang shredded pork—stuck with me as a favourite. Tender strips of pork, Chinese mushroom and vegetables come in an intensely flavourful sauce, full of garlic, chilli oil, Chinese wine and vinegar. Servings are big, and with some steamed rice this will leave you very satisfied.

I developed other favourites over a series of visits. Beef brisket with tomatoes is really tender, served in a thicker, delicately spiced sauce which is full of flavour. Lamb on fire (who can resist “on fire”?) comes wrapped in foil and surrounded by a slightly strange burning gel; it’s marinated in Chinese wine and spiced with lots of cumin, which for a moment almost recalled some of the curry joints down the other end of Brick Lane. But with black bean, the wine and other flavours, it makes for a tasty combination which I’d not tried before.

Another stand-out is sea bass, baked and served in foil with spring onions and (again!) a rich, intense sauce which also features cumin. Western cooking usually tries to avoid overpowering a fish like this, but here it totally works, the fish juices adding into the mix of flavours and producing something really rich and sublime.

This being Szechuan food of course, chilli does feature quite highly. Most of the drier dishes come with both smaller dried red chillis (quite lethal, but mainly just there to garnish and imbue flavour) and slices of the larger fresh red and green chillies, which are quite edible and tasty when cooked (taking the seeds out helps a bit). Some dishes, like the chilli king prawns, come with a giant pile of both.

It’s not all spice though; one soup starter we tried, while very large, was rather too watery. On the other hand, braised chicken and mushroom (which turned out to be virtually a soup) is excellent, with a dark fragrant broth and a generous helping of different dried mushrooms. Veggie dishes also turned out great, with yu-shiang sauce suiting the sweet sautéd aubergine particularly well.

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After a bunch of evening visits, it was a while until we tried the place again at lunchtime. So there was another rush of excitement a few weeks ago when we spotted the introduction of an unlimited £5 lunch buffet, which on our first visit included a dish of giant mussels!

The mussels sadly never returned; and the buffet options on the whole leaned a bit more towards their Cantonese-style takeaway menu, which we generally ignore at dinner in favour of the more interesting options. But these dishes are better done than the usual Chinese buffet, and with more of a chilli kick too. The buffet featured things like fried chicken, a great stew with beef, pork ribs, fish in a sauce, battered fish, tofu, noodles, egg-drop soup and more. Tasty and great value for money.

Disappointment was in store again, though. Demand seemed low for the buffet (we were the only customers sometimes) and they stopped doing it. Here’s hoping it comes back!

One question which many will ask is: how does Red Bar compare with Gourmet San along the road (one of London’s most recommended Szechuan restaurants)? It’s not yet as popular, so no queues to get a table, and some of the dishes which I’ve tried at both were slightly better presented down the road. But there’s really not a lot between them in terms of flavour, and on their top dishes I think Red Bar has a slight edge on the competition. They try a little harder than Gourmet San with the decor too, but it’s still fairly basic—it’s the food that matters here.

Price-wise it’s all very reasonable too, and unless you’re particularly hungry, you can easily share 3 main dishes between 4 (or 2 between 3). In fact, sharing is the best way to go with this food.

In short, a great local restaurant, and just what the area needed. There are lots more dishes for us to try (including some untranslated ones, some of which apparently are Hangzhou specialities, for even more variety!) and we’ll be back again and again.

In summary

Red bar and restaurant
132 Bethnal Green Rd, E2 6DG
0207 729 9954
Open 5pm-11pm, and usually for lunch on weekdays!

Not being sure to know an authentic dim sum dish from a chichi western imitation, we called on the assistance of Jill, who hails from the dim sum capital Hong Kong via pleasant Oxfordshire. (We’d already decided our dim sum meal should represent Hong Kong; we’re eyeing a Szechuan spot for China proper.) Jill is vehement in her dislike for chains like Ping Pong, which I’ll admit to having enjoyed in the past; so she suggested an oft-neglected dim sum restaurant in Chinatown serving the real deal.

The standard restaurant food at Golden Pagoda is, all told, as mediocre as any of the other outlets dishing up westernised Cantonese food on Gerrard street. That’s not why we visited, though. At weekend lunchtimes, a dedicated dim sum chef (Wai Sui Yu, from the acclaimed Dragon and Castle south of the river) takes over, and things take a turn for the better.

I did come with an idea of what to expect—my first dim sum experience in Toronto’s Chinatown centre was, I imagine, pretty authentic. Trollies full of small unidentified dishes were wheeled around the large room and devoured by eager Chinese pensioners, leaving the non-Cantonese-speaking amongst us to take a “lucky dip” approach to the day’s lunch menu. I tried many things, some delicious (dumplings, buns), some not to my taste (rubbery pickled slices of chicken feet) and some completely unidentified.

While Golden Pagoda doesn’t serve from trolleys, we were still glad to have some help in deciphering the Chinese order card, on which one ticks off quantities of dishes desired. Having a big table meant we got to sample a great variety of dishes, which is the best way to go about it, although leaves me struggling to describe all we ate.

Lots of Cantonese favourites were present, including many varieties of dumpling. (Har gau with their pleated wrappers; siu mai which are open-topped and orange-tinged; siu lung bau, extraordinary feats of engineering which burst with a filling of hot soup; the translucent fun gor.) And of course, some great steamed buns with char sui (bbq pork) and chicken.

Cheung fun are another Cantonese classic, with meat and seafood fillings wrapped in soft rice noodle sheets and slathered in soy. They’re slippery customers when armed with chopsticks, but proved very popular.

Yummy squid came both deep-fried and raw with a vinegary salad; lo bak goh (steamed turnip cake) and a similar steamed seafood cake proved a little gelatinous for some of us, although served well at soaking up soy. Lo mai gai (lotus leaf rice), while comforting, was not the best I’ve had.

The surprise for me was the chicken feet (fung zao), which I’ll admit to approaching with scepticism. This batch, served whole, boiled until tender, heavily seasoned and barbecued, were a much more agreeable proposition than the rubbery kind I’d tried in vinegar.

When it comes to desert, I missed out on my favourites, deep fried sesame buns. But we did try fried custard buns (near enough!), and a Hong Kong speciality, egg custard tarts. (These look very similar to the Portuguese pastel da nata, and probably arrived via the nearby Portuguese colony Macau.) Jill’s favourite was another Hong Kong dish, mango pudding, which rather resembles a blancmange.

How was the food then? Experienced hands certainly thought highly of it; for my part, I found it an altogether different experience to the fancier-looking dim sum chains. Perhaps a little less variety and subtlety when it came to flavours and fillings, but more wholesome and satisfying, and the feeling that liberties weren’t being taken with a reliable tradition. Good hangover food, in fact, making it an excellent choice for Sunday lunch, and great value at around £10 a head.

In summary

Golden Pagoda
15a Gerrard St, Chinatown, W1D 6JD
020 7434 2888