Vittles Reviews: We Are So Back
After a five-month break, Jonathan Nunn is back on Caledonian Road for home-style Hong Kong food. Photography by Michaël Protin.
Good morning and welcome back to Vittles Restaurants. Today’s review is by Jonathan Nunn.
Although Issue 1 of our magazine is temporarily out of stock until next week, we are still selling prints from the issue by illustrator Sing Yun Lee and photographer Michaël Protin, which you can find here.
As I was saying, before I was rudely interrupted by debilitating digestive issues and the stress of trying to publish a print magazine, there is something afoot at the bottom of Caledonian Road right now. Before the pandemic, my favourite place to eat around there was Q’s Kitchen, a chicken shop that did a semi-secret trade in Punjabi dishes, allowing you the dignity of assembling your own fried chicken paratha wrap and dipping it in spiced gravy. Q’s has since gone, but the shoulder of the road where it barges its way into King’s Cross is now teeming with restaurants: there’s the alt-Roti King, Hawker’s Kitchen, a special menu of Dongbei dishes at Xin Kai, a new location for hip South Indian restaurant Tamila and even a second Dr. Noodle, the northern-Chinese New Cross noodle specialist that led our first issue of Six of One. Oh, and the most famous restaurant in the world, The Yellow Bittern.
In truth, my break from writing has had as much to do with restaurant fatigue as it does my terrible gut health. It may just be a standard seven-year itch for restaurant writers, but there came a point where I realised that if the restaurants I like most tend towards serving home cooking, then I should cut out the middleman.
I’d been happy pottering away at the stove until my friend Jess sent me the menu from a new Hong Kong restaurant and tea room serving a highly peculiar set of home-style dishes, many of which I’ve never seen in London before. Of course, it turns out it’s in the basement of an art gallery on Caledonian Road. The space is remarkable, and has had the same effect on every person I’ve taken there: an intake of breath and a slight gasp. One minute you’re in what feels like a hospital waiting room and the next you’re in a languid underground tea room of teal and pastel pink, with impasto walls, marble tables, carved wood furnishings and conspiratorial alcoves. The restaurant has been open for a month, but barely looks ready at all; critics used to joke that Fay Maschler only went to restaurants new enough that you could still smell the plaster, but on my first visit, the tables were still dusted in it.