Cathay specific
Succulent sea food, vibrant flavours and plenty of
contented diners - Joanna Blythman discovers real
Chinese food in grown-up surroundings
SUNDAY HERALD

Next time I go to the Ho Wong, (soon, I hope).
I'm going to take along a tape recorder to capture
the satisfying sound of clinking plates, 
chopsticks tapping on bowls, sizzling platters and
the mellow conversation hum of many contented 
diners.  By way of soundtrack designed to provoke
relaxation, it would be up there with New Age
lapping waves and calling dolphins.
Perhaps it's reaction to trendy stripped-floor
restaurant where there's nothing to absorb the
sound.  Either the place is empty, in which case
it feels like eating in a cathedral, or it's busy
in which event it sounds like a reverberating
school canteen when the first year boys arrive.

So there is no din at the Ho Wong and no slavish
modernism either.  It's kitted out as a rich, dark
colonial restaurant with Somerset Maugham touches,
carpeted and velvety-plush, with solid and rather
beautiful pieces of carved furniture, vases of
fresh orchids and lilies and intimate little 
booths for those seeking box-at-the-opera
seclusion.  You are lounging around Imperial 
China, not roughing it with the Red Guard.
None of this would cut any ice with me if the
food was poor or even indifferent, but happily,
it is first rate.  The menu is modern and
Westernised in that it has dispensed with both
corner takeaway and trad "serious" Chinese
restaurant baggage.  That means it is of 
manageable length and omits both chicken chow
mein and steamed chicken feet with abalone and
glutinous sea vegetable.


It is streamlined into fairly familiar categories:
sizzling dishes, satays, bird's nests (something on a
bed of shredded fried yam) but seafood has price of
place.  Not only can Danny Chow cook, he knows where
to source raw materials too.  All his seafood comes
from Troon-based MacCallum's, a fish wholesaler of
impeccable provenance.  
Chow demonstrates the Chinese obsession that 
seafood must be ultra-fresh and he cooks it in a variety 
of inspired and interesting wayswithout over-elaborating.  
If I was going to splash out on a dover sole or lobster, 
(and believe me that won't be cheap), I cannot think of a 
better place to do so than the Ho Wong.At £3.50 a shot, 
one steamed scallop was a pricey commodity, but it was 
so wonderful that I found myself scraping away at the very 
last morsel of succulent flesh on the shell and draining 
the toasted-garlicky soy juices like a bowl of soup.  
Meanwhile, the deep-fried prawn dumpling was keeping 
amazingly hot over its candle-burner hotplate and this 
was another winner: a filling of  finely chopped prawns, 
chinese cabbage, spring onions, savoury and comforting, 
inside faultlessly crisp, cleanly-fried pastry half moons.  
So to the stuffed crab claw, an extraordinary dish where
the  crab meat is reformed around the black claw tip 
then fried in a thin crisp batter.  The flavour was
essence of crab, the texture, like a soft, moist
spongey doughnut - very different and entirely
delicious.

We had to try the "chilli and salt seafood combination"
whose explanatory note said merely "king prawn, squid,
scallops, tender squid and soft, grainy sole in a 
featherlight batter, dusted with salt and doused with a
last-minute garnish of stir-fried fresh green chilli in
garlicky-soy juices.  Bingo, another jackpot.  But more
was to come with the Peking duck.  This one could have
waddled out of the Imperial kitchen that devised the
process for fist pumping air through the windpipe of the
bird to separate the skin from the fat and meat,
scalding it with water, then hanging it to dry before
roasting it with water, then hanging it to dry before
roasting it with soy, sugar and rice wine.  This
procedure allows the skin to crisp and roast separately,
while the subcutaneous fat moistens the potentially
dry meat below.  This bird was a paragon of that art,
flinty parchmentry skin with a barbecued Chinese Five
Spice powder flavour and an almose creamy flesh, all
expertly taken off the bone and quite spendid when
rolled in steaming soft pancakes, smeared with hoisin
sauce and packed with elegant leek and cucumber strips.
We had more hits with a bowl of wiry egg thread noodles
and crunchy beansprouts with exuded the perfume you get
from a well-seasoned wok and vibrant choi sum greens
and spinach steamed then served in amber cooking liquid
of rice wine and soy.

With so much good savoury food it's no wonder that the
Chinese aren't big on desserts.  The Ho Wong shows
characteristic lack of interest with bought-in Italian
ice creams.  So if you crave something sweet, try its
opulent fruit salad loaded with kiwi, mango, pineapple,
grapes and strawberries or tinned lychees ( the only
fruit that is arguably as good tinned as fresh).
Otherwise, just savour the bustling tranquility and the
service, which is as fast, efficient and affable as you
could hope to find.