There are two good signs in this picture.
The first is that you can see the chef at work, meaning that they have nothing (or less at least) to hide. The second is the racks with hanging roast duck and pork - whilst some people apparently think it's unhygeinic, but for me it's always a reassuring and slightly mouthwatering sight at a Chinese restaurant.
After our last after-lab-dinner trip, this time YST and I decided to try out Yim Wah Express, the new Chinese place on the corner of Lensfield Rd and Regent St. Together with Golden House and Lan Hong House, this now makes a trio of Chinese restaurants on this corner. Unlike it's take-away style neighbours however, it looks like they've spent quite a bit of effort to make the place look nice, with shiny new furniture and a decent sized seating area.
I had initially intended to go for something with roast duck in it, since they had it just hanging there, but upon reading the MASSIVE menu (over 200 food items, a logistical kitchen nightmare... how do they do it? lots of frozen stuff?) I decided to go for something a little different...
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| Marinated beef tripe ho fun in soup (£6.80) |
So I was delighted to find my tripe soup noodles turned out to be more than just tripe (stomach), but also liver, kidney and tendon.
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| Does anyone find this too hard to STOMACH? Get it? Damn I'm funny. |
Tendon and tripe are my favourites - tendon is wonderfully thick and gelatinous in texture thanks to lots of collagen, a little similar to the texture of fat except without all the guilt. Tripe on the other hand is more chewy, but it really soaks up flavour!
Kidney wasn't bad either, with a mix of meatiness and jelly-like consistency. Liver however was my least favourite - it was a little gritty and had that characteristic livery taste which I'm not the biggest fan of (although I do like pate).
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| Chef's special mixed fish balls and vermicelli soup (£7.20) |
YST's fish ball noodle soup was a little disappointing I have to say, with just a few balls and a bit of chinese cabbage as the only toppings.
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| Frog legs with chilli (£6.20) |
Overall this restaurant seems like a welcome addition to the Chinese restaurant scene in Cambridge, with the generally milder flavours a good counterpoint to the more fiery style of Seven Days (which will be the next blog post!). I'm keen to go back and have some of the roast meat dishes, as that seems to be their kind of speciality.
Yim Wah Express
2-4 Lensfield Rd
Cambridge CB2 1EG
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 309530
http://www.yimwahhouse.co.uk/
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I've eaten there before but was a little disappointed. Found the food a bit bland and the dishes we had were quite sweet with not much salt or spice to balance... Having said that I'm generally to scared to try things like tripe...
ReplyDeleteMy friend who's been there several times says it depends quite a lot on what you order - she says the stir fried rice noodles with beef (dry style?? I don't know the English translation excatly, so that's my attempt) is really good there.
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