A. Wong restaurant review and the 8 course tasting menu
For Valentines we thought we would try the new Chinese restaurant in Victoria called A. Wong. A. Wong is also the name of the head chef who goes by the name of Andrew Wong who did a pilgrimage around China to learn about Chinese cooking. We decided to go for the 8 course tasting menu (note 8 is the lucky number in Chinese culture) which costs £38.88!
I must admit, I’ve never tasted Chinese food like this… it was really good and we liked how it starts as a culinary journey through China. Although I can’t remember what they said exactly, the waiters were super friendly, they used sentences like “and now you continue your journey to Yunan where the noodles are…”
We started with the dim sum platter which consisted of prawn har gau and pork siu-mai and Shanghai buns… I must admit, these were absolutely delicious and the best I’ve ever tasted (I’m not kidding!). What was interesting was that the prawn har gau dumplings were frothing away… a nice effect!
The second course was the hot and sour soup accompanied by the huge prawn cracker with seaweed. I’ve had hot and sour soup before but this was very good. The prawn cracker was good and the seaweed was a great combination.
The third course was the mixed vegetable. I think these were baby pak choi stems cooked with dried shrimps.
Then we had the razor clams with the sea cucumber, pickled ginger, vinegar tapoica and the wind dried sausage. We really like this though it did seem to take ages for it to come out and we gobbled the whole lot up in probably less than a minute!
The fifth course was the chicken with peanuts and ‘gong boa’ sauce – this was the first of the main meals. I really enjoyed this dish.. the chicken had a really delicate flavour and the peanuts went so well with it. The chicken also just melted! We also got an aubergine dish with this which I really liked and some rice.. that helped!
The next dish was the low cooked Scotch rib eye with Yunnan truffles and prawn crackers. I thought this dish was a little weird for a Chinese meal.. I’ve never had a Scotch rib eye in a Chinese meal but it tasted great!
Next came the first dessert dish which was the chilli barbequed pineapple with Beijing curd.. it seemed like a weird combination but it actually was really good.
And the last dish was the snow ball meringue, lychee granite, mango and lime sorbet. I thought this was an awesome dessert, the lychee especially was really good. I actually checked on the website and it says that this dish should have been the tea smoked banana with crumble but I think what we had was a better choice!
In summary, we thought the food was excellent.. it’s not like any other Chinese restaurant we’ve been in, in terms of the food, it is Chinese fine dining. The A. Wong restaurant is nicely done up.. we did laugh as the new doors were so stiff that a lot of people had trouble getting in. The waiters and waitresses were super friendly and made us feel welcome. I think the only thing which was a little downer was the time it took between dishes.. as with fine cuisine, you don’t get much per plate so they didn’t last very long with us (we were both starving!). At times we waited 20 minutes between dishes which we did complain about and towards the end, we felt it did speed up. In total for the 8 courses, it took 3 hours so you do need to make sure you have the time to do this.
Their website can be reached here: http://www.awong.co.uk/
