july MENU

26 menus... that’s as menu menus as there are letters, as many menus as Walt Disney has won Oscars, as many menus as space time dimensions there are according to Bosonic string theory...

that’s a lot of menus, and a lot of words written about said menus.

But each month starts with the same idea, what 4 meals and two sides, do we think, will give our customers, the absolute best experience, that we can consistently deliver, providing an exciting, delicious and varied Chinese chippy meal, that is
absolutely inspired by your (old) favourite chippy, but using the absolute best in fresh, local ingredients.

This month we have focused on returns, glorious comeback kings and queens, old favourites and new renditions, some dishes just with a spruce up and others completely reinvented, familiar and comforting yet new and exciting.

peking
ribs

The first dish off the comeback trail is our peking ribs.

Its been a while...

Same old fall off the bone chunky boi ribs, but this time coated in a sticky Peking sauce.

Made from salted plums, soy, sugar and chilli paste, a zingy umami base brightened by a fruity and spicey kick, in terms of ranking things that were worth the wait, the return of the rib ranks somewhere in between Top Gun: Maverick and GTA 6.

sweet and sour siu mai

Next up is the controversial one.

We know sweet and sour can be a bit of a Marmitey selection, hence its absence from the roster for a long time.

So we’ve hit a compromise with our sweet & sour shumai. Crispy Dumplings filled with minced
pork and slow cooked shoulder, bound with caramelised pineapple and peppers all sat on our vibrant sweet and sour sauce, now obviously I would never compare a dim sum to Jesus, but I do trust their ability to convert the non-believers.

chilli shredded beef

Chilli Shredded Beef is the next dish to return after a two year hiatus.

Time for honesty hour...

The reason this dish has spent so much time in the wilderness is that I found it really hard to figure out how to do this dish that both paid homage to the classic takeaway dish but also championed good quality beef cooked perfectly.

So we tried,

and we tried,

and I said no...

Then we tried and tried again, then finally...

We got there.

The right beef, dry aged sirloin, the right flour mix, the right seasoning and then all bound with a sauce so good I nearly hung up my wok.

As Mark Twain said “All good things arrive unto them that wait - and don't die in the meantime”

garlic and sesame chicken

I see recipes calling for one clove of garlic.

One clove of garlic is not enough for any recipe unless it’s a recipe for, ‘how to cook one clove of garlic’, even in this case, use two.

Garlic is like pepper in that a little bit too much is far too much, but a lot too much takes it all the way to Nirvana. So our Garlic & Sesame Chicken starts with many many garlics roasted in sesame oil and perfect blend of herbs and spices.

So rich its almost creamy it coats roasted chicken thighs and onions like an allium duffel and is finished with a home fermented black garlic crumb that goes off like a firework in a pitch-black skyscape.

This dish is nothing but f*****g delicious... and garlic.