Angeles

ANGELES

Cuisine: Sichuan

Nearest tube: Kilburn

Address: 405 Kilburn High Road, London, NW6 7QL

Tel: 020 7625 8686

Sichuan food is Cantonese food's younger, sexier sister. This is where she lives.

Don't get the two mixed up - as far as Chinese cuisine goes, the two are a world apart. Sichuan is a heady mix of strong, spicy, aromatic flavours, and whilst Angeles serves both Sichuan and Cantonese food, the former is definitely the best option.

This is one of those restaurants where Chinese people go - the restaurant is always packed full of locals crowded round a bubbling hotpot. I have yet to try the hotpot, but the menu is so good that there's plenty to be getting on with in the meantime. 

The restaurant is split in half - the left side is a grotty all-you-can-eat buffet, serving stodgy crap like sweet and sour chicken for the local yos and yoettes. Stay out of there, lest you catch a stray bullet. The right hand side is the bustling hub of Sichuan activity, in a spacious dining area that affords you a good peek at what everyone else is eating.

The food is truly excellent. We go for a platter of mixed grilled skewers, which include ox tongue, curried squid, cuttlefish cake, tofu, sweetcorn, king prawn, spicy lamb and chicken wings. All are delicious, with the cuttlefish particularly outstanding - a wonderful spongy texture, perfectly crisp on the outside, with a sweet teriyaki-style sauce. Main dishes include mapo tofu, a little too oily but with that distinct pungent soybean flavour unique to this dish. The stir-fried green beans with chilli are delicious, spicy and savoury, and the dandan noodles are wonderfully moreish, in a tasty, meaty sauce with that aromatic Sichuan aftertaste. 

Mapo tofu and green beans with chilli

My one problem with Sichuan food is that it's not the healthiest cuisine - most dishes are rather oily and greasy - but the unique flavours more than make up for it. Despite feeling a little bit sick afterwards, I thoroughly enjoyed this tasty meal that is far more lively than its oriental counterpart.

If you haven't tried Sichuan before and you have an adventurous palate, get yourself down there for some red hot foody action.

Service 4/5

Food 4/5

Value 3/5

Ambience 4/5

Total: 15/20

Why you should go there: Authentic food bursting with flavour.

Don’t leave without trying: Green beans with chilli

Wing Tai

WING TAI

Cuisine: Chinese

Nearest tube: Brent Cross

Address: 395 Edgware Road, NW2 6LN

Tel: 020 8452 2333

On June 1st 2008 something very precious to me died. 

Oriental City, AKA Yaohan Plaza, was the finest oriental shopping centre to grace the planet. The two jewels in its crown were: 1) the food court, which had about a dozen stalls selling dirt-cheap top-notch food from any Asian cuisine you could think of; 2) China City, an outstanding Chinese restaurant. Brent Council closed it two years ago for redevelopment, and a little part of me died inside. No demolition or building work has yet taken place. The building remains boarded-up and empty. This makes me so angry, words cannot do it justice.

So that's the history lesson over. The legacy being that since 2008, I have been looking for a Chinese restaurant to replace it. A few have come close, but never matched the quality of the legend that is China City. Until now.

Wing Tai is a restaurant that appeared after the redevelopment of the Staples Corner branch of Wing Yip, a popular oriental supermarket. It sits just on the corner of the complex, in the same building as the supermarket and the delightful Reindeer Cafe (review coming soon). My knowledge of Wing Tai was limited to peeping through the windows, but last night I finally got round to eating there. And boy, am I glad that I did.

The decor ticks all the boxes, elegant and traditional with that reassuring touch of tackiness that comes with huge golden dragons stuck to the wall. Despite being sat on a table by the wall (giving me a majestic view of the car park through the window), this is a nice place to eat in. It fills up quickly, and it's easy to see why. 

First course, the only way to start any Chinese banquet - deep fried soft shell crab. If you haven't tried it before, stop reading this and go get some. Rarely have I had a bad version of this dish, but Wing Tai's is particularly good. It's crispy, not too greasy, well-sized and served with a generous amount of that wonderful diced onion, chilli and garlic relish that is nearly as good as the crab itself.

Soft shell crab

For mains, we go for three kinds of roasted meat: the duck is adequate, the belly pork is crisp, and the char siu is truly delicious, moist and succulent. The mapo tofu isn't the best I've tasted, the sauce being overly salty and lacking the pungent flavour of fermented beans that I know and love.

Mixed roasted meats (front) and mapo tofu (back)

The mixed seafood ho fun is wonderful, an enormous portion packed with juicy king prawns, huge sweet scallops, and thick chunks of surprisingly tender squid. The noodles themselves are cooked perfectly, with that unique burnt oil taste that I crave. The real standout dish is the eel in black bean sauce. The eel is fresh, moist and creamy (I imagine it's been bought fresh from the neighbouring supermarket and their remarkable fish counter). The sauce is exquisite, so much more than normal black bean sauce, with a delicate combination of flavours between the salty beans, the sharp tang of ginger, and a wonderful bitter citrus hint of what I can only imagine is finely diced orange peel.

Eel in black bean sauce

Mixed seafood ho fun

All in all, this was a truly delicious meal that rivals any Chinese restaurant I could think of. It's not cheap (around £80 for three people) but I wouldn't expect food this good to be cheap. The service was a little slow, but our comedy waiter made up for it ("What's that dish those people are having?" "Sizzling . . . something").

Congratulations Wing Tai, to the top of the Chinese restaurant league you go.

Service 3/5

Food 5/5

Value 3/5

Ambience 4/5

Total: 15/20

Why you should go there: The best Chinese food in town.

Don’t leave without trying: Eel in black bean sauce

Megabite Cafe

MEGABITE CAFE

Cuisine: Chinese

Nearest tube: Holloway Road

Address: 117 Benwell Road, Islington, N7 7BW

Tel: 0207 697 0891

Arsene Wenger, and Arsenal Football Club in general, have Megabite Cafe to thank for my continued support.

It is no lie that were it not for this wonderful little eatery, I would go to Arsenal home matches far, far less than I do. It is a compulsory part of the matchday experience, and depressingly, is usually the highlight of the day.

To give it a football analogy, Megabite Cafe is a bit like Cesc Fabregas. An unpolished gem that's been around for ages, great value, magnificent quality, and has blossomed into the heart and soul of the football club. Rumours of Barcelona attempting to purchase the cafe and airlift it to Catalonia are yet unconfirmed. (And if you're reading this Pep Guardiola, fuck off, there's no Barca DNA here)

Very much in the Wong Kei mould, Megabite serves huge plates of delicious food for next to nothing, minus the rude service. Most meals cost under a fiver, and range from my usual favourites of mixed seafood ho fun, lamb with sea spicy aubergine and crispy noodles, to my friends' usual choice of mixed meat Thai curry. All of which should of course be smothered with the fantastic chilli oil. Every dish, without exception, is expertly cooked, in a huge satisfying portion that will never let you down as much as the football inevitably will.

In short, this little cafe has become a treasured part of my life. I've had some real moments here over the past four years: counting down the minutes on a rainy Tuesday night before a big Champions League match; celebrating a victory on a Saturday afternoon by swearing at the passing away support coaches; or even just cramming in a quick meal before going to the pub to watch a game on TV. Win, lose or draw, Megabite Cafe always delivers.

Service 4/5

Food 4/5

Value 5/5

Ambience 2/5

Total: 15/20

Why you should go there: Brilliant food, huge portions, dirt cheap.

Don’t leave without trying: Lamb with sea spicy aubergine

Wong Kei

WONG KEI

Cuisine: Chinese

Nearest tube: Picadilly Circus

Address: 41-43 Wardour Street, W1D 6PY

Tel: 020 7437 8408

Wong Kei wins the distinct honour of Joel's 'Most Visited' restaurant. Wear it with pride, boys.

Disclaimers out of the way first: Wong Kei is not a pleasant place to eat. It is not an elegant dining experience. The standard procedure is: get in; eat; get out. This place is probably more famous for its brisk, unfriendly, and often downright rude service. And I wouldn't change it for the world.

There's something unspeakably satisfying about the whole experience. Walking in without bothering with the pleasantries of a smile or a 'good evening', you hold up the requisite number of fingers before being unceremoniously ushered up or down a grubby flight of stairs into a packed dining room, as you are then herded onto a table that will almost certainly already be seated with other diners. A menu is shoved under your nose as a waiter grunts in your general direction. Yeah, welcome to Wong Kei. Now hurry up and order.

But hey, I love it. Us Londoners are fundamentally rude, so this is an eating experience that mirrors our black hearts, doing away with the sickening insincerity and etiquette that usually plagues a visit to a restaurant. Like an abusive relationship, I keep coming back for more.

The reason being of course, the food. And the prices. The food is good. The food is cheap. An enormous plate of delicious, authentic food costs around a fiver, providing you locate the hidden set meals at the back of the menus, which all seasoned WK veterans do. I usually go for Mapo Tofu - minced pork and tofu in a spicy savoury sauce, or mixed seafood ho-fun, which consists of king prawns, squid and fishballs ontop of thick flat noodles. At this point I'll admit that I usually order the same thing at any Chinese restaurant, but that just means I'm experienced. And the food here isn't the best I've ever tasted, but it's still warm and satisfying, a bit like an old pair of slippers.

Mixed seafood ho-fun, complete with chilli oil

A comparison to an old pair of slippers isn't really the perfect way to conclude a review of one of my all-time favourite restaurants, but hey, Wong Kei isn't really a perfect restaurant. It's quick, it's cheap, and it's tasty. What more do you want?

Service 3/5

Food 3/5

Value 5/5

Ambience 2/5

Total: 13/20

Why you should go there: Good hearty food if you're skint or in a hurry

Don’t leave without trying: Deep fried squid with salt and chilli