All the Tea in China

Bamboo Basket doesn't quite make the grade

Because Westfield pitches itself at the luxury end of the market, I cannot help having very high expectations when I go to eat at any of the restaurants there and Bamboo Basket, in the Balcony area of the shopping mall, was no exception. It advertises itself as being like a Chinese street market and in my mind that means cheap, simple, good quality food.  

The menu at Bamboo Basket was short, with only two or three dishes per category and none of my favourites, such as tofu, monk's vegetables or oyster mushrooms. Still, we managed to order a good selection of dishes, including fried rice with duck, prawn dumplings, vegetable buns, Chinese sausage and pork in a 'clay pot', and Jasmine tea.

As there is no table service at the Balcony restaurants, you order your food at the Bamboo Basket counter, take a ticket and wait for you number to be called. Somehow, this did not quite seem to fit the Westfield image and reminded me more of a children's soft play venue where you get yelled at to pick up your meal.

Disappointingly the 'clay pot' we had asked for was not clay at all but just a regular ceramic bowl. In it, a few pieces of meat had been dumped unappetisingly on top of the rice. The fried rice with duck was passable but nothing special and, while I would usually enjoy eating with chopsticks at a Chinese restaurant, this turned out to be almost impossible: instead of Chinese-style rice, which sticks together and makes chopstick-eating easy, Bamboo Basket serves regular rice which you cannot transport from plate to mouth with anything narrower than a thick fork.

I was temporarily cheered by the sight of a Chinese-looking family on the table next to us: if they were eating here it must surely be good. Then, I realised they were not dining at all but just drinking milk shakes from another eatery.

And that is the nice thing about the Balcony concept: you and your dining companions can all choose to eat from completely different eateries and still sit together. On the day we visited, plenty of people were doing just that, enjoying a combination of French, Lebanese, Italian, Mexican or Vietnamese food, while sharing the same table.    

Unlike the rice and 'clay' pot dishes, our prawn dumplings and vegetable buns were attractively served, with the former arriving in a bamboo basket and the three round buns coming on a long rectangular plate. Thankfully, these tasted as good as they looked and the herby leek  - or Xiu Cai - inside the vegetable buns was gorgeous.

The other big hit was the Jasmine tea, which was beautifully fragrant, once I had got over my initial reservations about having a whole flower head and pink petals floating around in my mug. The only thing that was missing was the constant refills, as you would normally get in a Chinese restaurant.

And I guess that is the point. It would be better to describe the food at Bamboo Basket as 'Chinese-inspired' rather than Chinese, because if you go there expecting the real thing, you will be disappointed. However, at £23.70 for the whole meal, it was hardly extortionate.

If I were to go there again, I would have dim sum and Jasmine tea only. For anything more substantial, I would hop straight on the Central line and head down to China Town.

Yasmine Estaphanos

24 November 2008