We know you're supposed to give new restaurants a bit of time to settle in, but when we heard that Geoffrey Leong had opened a Taiwanese eatery in Chinatown - we couldn't resist popping in after work. The Leong family own and run some of London's most successful restaurants, including Koi, Goldfish and Leong's Legends. Their new venture is named after the second biggest harbour city in northern Taiwan, Keelung, and specialises in the street food dishes that are served in the city's bustling night markets.
The restaurant itself is set over two floors and separated into several cosy dining areas, including an impressive private room with sliding doors to ensure complete privacy. The decor is elegant and understated, with wooden partitions, warm lighting and a smart wall of wine creating a tranquil Western backdrop for the main event - the food. Though Keelung has barely been open a week, the dining room was already buzzing when we arrived early on Monday night.
As you enter, there is a fresh fish counter that showcases a daily catch of sustainable seafood, while a huge blown-up photo of the Keelung night market takes pride of place above the stairs. In an adjoining room, wooden shelves will soon be filled with traditional cakes and snacks which diners can pop in and buy at any time. ("They're somewhere in the Atlantic as we speak," explained manager Andrew Hung.)
As we settled into one of the booths, we experienced menu overload. The main menu is helpfully divided into night market tapas; soup; Taiwanese specials; congee, rice and noodles; and dessert. However, there is also a selection of Chef's Specials on each table and a multiple choice seafood menu that lists what's on offer and how it can be prepared - e.g. steamed with chilli; sashimi; Sichuan style, etc. You could eat here every day for a month without exhausting the menu.
From the seafood menu, we chose the Kung Pao style sea bass which seemed like a very generous tapas-sized portion. The ultra-fresh sea bass was perfectly cooked and not overwhelmed by the vast quantities of dried red chillies and ginger. Looking back, we wish we had ordered more seafood!
The claypot chicken with Shaoxing wine was the star dish of the night, with chicken so tender it simply fell off the bones. The light broth - flavoured with ginger, goji berries and fermented rice wine - was so good we could have happily sipped it from the dish. This came from the Taiwanese Specials section, which also includes more adventurous regional dishes like stewed pig's trotters with Chinese herbs and pig's kidney in sesame oil and rice wine. Not for the faint hearted!
From the list of Chef's Specials, we feasted on seriously spicy green beans with minced pork and lashings of fresh chilli. (The menu is quite meat and seafood heavy, but there are vegetarian dishes on offer, like Ma Po tofu, stir-fried broccoli with garlic, and Shanghai baby pak choi with oyster sauce).
After our recent visit to Ba Shan, we should have learnt that when the menu says spicy - it means it! We found the skins of these wontons a little tough but the sauce was fiery and addictive. (Next time, we're having the steamed crab meat Siu Loung Bao we saw arriving at another table.)
Our final dish, crispy garlic prawns, was exactly that - sweet, juicy prawns slathered in a rich garlic sauce, topped with spring onions and a generous sprinkling of crispy fried garlic. Very good indeed, though they will leave you with breath that could kill a vampire at twenty paces.
For dessert, we couldn't resist the intriguingly named 'mixed cool crystal balls'. These little sweet dumplings are an acquired taste and we still have no idea what was in them, though the grey ones tasted like sesame and the brown ones are probably red bean paste. The yellow ones were easily the best, with a sweet custardy filling.
Our conclusion? We'll definitely be back to work our way through the rest of the menu. Most dishes are reasonable - priced around the £5 mark - but if you're really hungry or order the pricier seafood, the bill could soon mount up. We can't comment on the authenticity, having never been to Taiwan, but if you're looking for fiery, flavoursome dishes you won't be disappointed here.
The critics will no doubt claim that the chic decor doesn't sit well with the street food menu but we think its great to finally uncover a bit of glamour (and friendly service!) in the heart of Chinatown. If you're bored of 'beige' gastropub fare, the latest addition to the Leong empire is guaranteed to wake up your tastebuds.
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