China House opens on Sundays for dinner.

Ed eats

China House
8, Spinola Road
St Julian’s
Tel 2135 5021

Food: 6/10
Service: 7/10
Ambience: 5/10
Value: 7/10
Overall: 6/10

If you live in Malta and have ever travelled, you will have realised that there are trends that reach us with something of a lag. Even if you don’t ever travel, you might have access to the internet and this should have provided the same insight.

I consider this a good thing in many, many ways. When I was younger I hated the lag but now that I’m ageing into a more acerbic old Stilton, I have grown to appreciate the laziness with which we approach progress.

We’re not a country that hates progress. We pretend to embrace it and, quite often, rush headlong into it before we know what’s good for us. But there are aspects where we hang on to what we know. Like dedicating Sunday to getting some rest before the week throws a truckload of manure at the windmill outside the house.

Most metropolitan areas seem to live around the clock, with no thought given to the need for rest and recuperation. To do so, businesses employ enough people to make sure sales are possible around the clock, all week, every week. From a customer’s point of view this is usually chucked into the box labelled ‘a good thing’.

From a provider’s point of view, however, it often means dilution of the quality of service rendered because of the difficulty of ensuring that the quality you have so painstakingly established is maintained by every shift. Unless one is excellent at transmitting values, the easiest way to achieve consistency is by lowering the level of service offered.

This matters to me because it has an impact on food. Eating out on a Sunday evening is a tough one. Many of my favourite places skip the dinner service on a Sunday, opting to get some rest and family time. As frustrating as this is to a hungry and picky diner, it is also an indication of the balance that’s being sought by those running a restaurant. And despite the frustration, I’m glad we’re lagging behind on this one.

This does not mean that every restaurant open on a Sunday night is doing something wrong. It just means that whoever is running the place has figured out a way to keep things running smoothly. Or that they close on another night of the week. What it does say about those who don’t open is that they’d rather shut their doors to the public than open up and deliver half-heartedly.

Somehow, all the places I had in mind last Sunday were closed. I tried restaurant after restaurant, looking up their opening hours or calling to see if anyone would reply. No joy was to be had. While I went through this process of trying to find a table for the evening, I had a food programme running on TV. I’m aware there was important football being played but I have yet to discover the joys of watching a sport played by people I don’t know.

The (new) China House won’t go down on my list of memorable dim sum experiences

As I watched and browsed and dialled, a feature on dim sum started. I like dim sum. Had the editorial policies of this paper allowed reviews of restaurants beyond our shores, you’d have definitely read all about places like Yauatcha in London, for instance. They know dim sum, they know service and you should know that you shouldn’t attempt to walk in if you’re ever in the mood to give the place a shot. Book in advance and prepare for an exercise in restraint and balance.

Anyhow, I was now in the mood for some dim sum, and that thought is usually chased by the void in one’s stomach that has the shape of Chinese food. I’m not a great fan of commercially-prepared Chinese food and of gathering the variety offered by a population of over a billion into a single umbrella term either. But there was no turning back. My belly had decided.

I went through my mental checklist of Chinese restaurants I’d visited already and this was an almost homogeneous streak of disappointment. Undeterred, I tried to think of somewhere that would be open on a Sunday and China House sprang to mind.

The location means that parking was bound to be crazy but it is the year of the horse and it didn’t take me long to find a post to which to tether mine. With luck on our side, I walked into China House feeling confident. And hungry.

We were greeted very pleasantly by a young lady who appeared to be in charge of things that evening. She guided us to a table and left menus, smiling all the time as she did so.

I’m not one for set menus so I set about looking through the countless dishes that are pretty standard for Chinese restaurants. The same sauce tends to turn up in every section of the menu, with the meat it’s applied to as the only variation.

There was one set menu-styled item that I picked – a dim sum platter for starters. This would be the typical mix of steamed dumplings, but I just had to give it a shot. I followed this with fillet of beef in black bean sauce, mainly because all the other items just said beef, so I took the addition of the word ‘fillet’ to indicate a superior quality cut. A dish of fried rice noodles with bean sprouts would accompany our main courses.

Quite happy to have joined, the better half also avoided the set-menu approach. She went with crispy seaweed, dry barbecue ribs and prawn crackers to start with and followed this up with skinless king prawns with garlic and ginger. I would never have thought of ordering prawn crackers, considering them a Westernised abomination, but I have a sense of self-preservation that prevents me from pointing out this sort of observation.

The wine menu is attractively priced, so I added a €22 bottle of Chablis to the mix. The wine turned out to be quite a cheap Chablis and was served by a slightly grumpy man who must have been instructed to be mechanical about performing his duty. Pity really, especially when compared to the girl who had greeted us and to the other one who had taken our order.

Our starters were served within a few minutes of each other, giving me the time to taste everything I hadn’t ordered myself by the time the bamboo steamer full of dim sum arrived. The dry barbecue ribs are battered and served without a sauce. They are salty and wickedly enjoyable in the way chicken wings can be addictive but without the mess and the grease. Under protest, I tried a prawn cracker and, as usual, it did not taste remotely like prawn. The crispy seaweed was good but a little too oily for my liking.

The bamboo steamer contained half a dozen dumplings in different shapes and sizes. One was overly ambitious and about 10 centimetres long. There was no way this would retain its integrity, so it fell to bits when I attempted to liberate if from its steaming prison. As usual, I could hardly tell what was inside the dumplings. The pork is processed to a sausage-like consistency, the shrimps tiny and the flavour an indeterminate savoury attack but I enjoyed the lot nonetheless.

Our main courses took a while and I half expected this because the restaurant enjoyed quite a number of occupied tables. The beef was pretty decent, even if the sauce separated slightly and slipped off the meat rather than adhering to it. The sauce that accompanied the prawns was thickened to a gloop but the garlic and ginger held their own and kept the dish within the limits of acceptability.

The (new) China House won’t go down on my list of memorable dim sum experiences but it won’t fit within the list of tragic experiences I’ve suffered at the hands of some of their competitors. It might not be the kind of place I’d suggest to a group of people but then again, if it were to be suggested by someone, I won’t find myself rooting around for excuses not to make it. I might, however, order a few pints of Tsingtao instead, and have ribs for starters, main course and dessert.

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