Pomegranate

POMEGRANATE

Cuisine: Thai

Nearest tube: Willesden Green

Address: 35e Walm Lane, Willesden Green, London NW2 5SH

Tel: 020 8830 2111

An unassuming yet charming little eatery.

This place has gone straight to the top of the Thai premier league of restaurants. Cosy, delicious, and unlicensed - bring your own booze, people!

I'd been driving past this inauspicious-looking restaurant for years - compared to all the other gaudy-looking places in Willesden, Pomegranate does tend to be invisible to the untrained eye, located around a dark little corner next to Willesden Green station. The most notable thing about this place is just how tiny it is - four tables that seat four people each, so with a maximum occupancy of 16, booking a table is advised as it fills up with locals pretty quickly.

The interior is warm, snug and homely, a bit like being in someone's dining room for a private dinner party. The chairs are a little uncomfortable and it's very small inside, but it has a certain comforting charm that seems perfect for a romantic evening out.

The menu contains the usual Thai fare - the chicken satay is tender and tasty, the tom yam het is fragrant and spicy. The som tam is fresh and crisp, with a light hint of chilli that doesn't overpower the dish, although it's a little too sour for my liking. For our mains, the pork pad kaprow is well-spiced with a bold savoury sauce that errs on the side of salty, and the prawn tord kratiem is garlicky and peppery, with huge juicy prawns that possibly could've done with a few more vegetables, but I'm nitpicking - the food is good. The coconut rice is creamy and fluffy, offsetting the savoury dishes perfectly. 

Pork pad kaprow and prawn kratiem

The service is good, with a pretty smiling Thai girl only a few feet away should you need assistance. However, it's cash only, which I wish I'd known ealier - it would've saved me a breathless dash to the cashpoint. It's reasonably priced, costing us about £35, and anyone wishing to have a glass of wine need only pop to the Sainsburies over the road - the bring-your-own-booze is definitely one of the big plus points for the locals (mostly Australians, so expect to see groups of squawking women sinking bottle after bottle of cheap plonk).

All in all, the food is decent, well-priced, and it was a lovely little evening out.

Service 3/5

Food 3/5

Value 3/5

Ambience 4/5

Total: 13/20

Why you should go there: For a cosy and intimate evening out.

Don’t leave without trying: Tord kratiem

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

Golden Bengal

GOLDEN BENGAL

Cuisine: Indian

Nearest tube: Willesden Green

Address: 21 Walm Lane, NW2 5SH

Tel: 0208 451 4466

And so continues my seemingly eternal quest to find a decent curry house.

Golden Bengal is very much a member of the ‘new school’ of curry houses – polished interior, snazzy menu complete with trendy fusion dishes, TV with the latest bhangra hits on Sky, and not a scrap of textured wallpaper in sight. The restaurant is topped off by a gaudy bar illuminated with a fluorescent purple glow.

The first thing that strikes me is how much our waiter looks like an Asian Eric Cantona. Fortunately, he didn’t kick us in the face. He did, however, provide an amusing running commentary of his actions, complete with misuse of the present continuous tense: “I’m bringing this plate now”, “I’m moving this glass over here”, “I’m taking this glass away to make more room – it is empty”. As an English teacher, you tend to notice these things.

The first test of any self-respecting curry house is the chutney accompaniment to the pappadoms, always a solid indicator of the quality you’re dealing with. Chopped onions – fine. Mango chutney out of a jar – awright. Green yoghurt that’s suffering from a pudding/condiment identity crisis – check. Orange coconut filling scooped out of the middle of a Bounty – hello!

The mixed starters are wholly uninspiring, your usual lazy fare of bland samosa, bland prawn curry, ubiquitous onion bhajee yet a rather tasty lamb kebab. We were waiting at least half an hour for our main course, and as one of only three couples in the whole place, this was borderline unforgiveable, especially as the sizzling dish at the table next to us smelled so damn good.

Eventually our food arrived. And it was pretty damn tasty. The lamb tikka manchori came in a thick, tasty, savoury sauce, despite the lamb itself coming in unpleasantly chewy hunks. The garlic chilli chicken balti did exactly what it said on the tin, in a rich tangy sauce that had generous chunks of both garlic and chilli. The vegetable haleem was rather anonymous, the peshwari naan fluffy and buttery. All in all, a fine meal.

Which makes it all the more tragic that it took so bloody long, otherwise I’d definitely be going back. It was reasonably priced - £20 a head including beer – so I’d consider returning if I had plenty of time to kill. As it is, I think I can probably do better. Next!

Service 2/5

Food 3/5

Value 3/5

Ambience 2/5

Total: 10/20

Why you should go there: Tasty food, decently priced.

Don’t leave without trying: ...not to die of hunger waiting for your food to arrive