Review of 'Yauatcha'

Item: Yauatcha
Rating: 4.5
Author: Stephen Rice

I have always wanted to visit Yauatcha having heard that it's dim sum was incredible. I was not disappointed.

We took advantage of the “Taste of Yauatcha” menu which provides 8 different dim sum items for two people for £28.88, though only between 3 and 6 pm Monday through Friday. Luckily enough we were able to get a reservation for an early Friday dinner before a show in the west end.

The cool blue exterior continues to the interior and has an air of cool refinement throughout but this feeling is a bit spoiled with our seat against a semi-transparent wall that we could see had a rusting shelving unit leaning against it on the other side. The seats and flooring also, on further inspection, showed a bit of wear. The food and service, fortunately, did not fail to impress by any means. The Har Gau (steamed rice dumpling with prawns) and Crystal Dumpling (with pumpkin) were particularly wonderful – Lovely, delicate and fresh flavours. The three-style mushroom cheung fun was absolutely magnificent - Soft noodle exterior with the crunchy donut interior and wonderful, light, soy sauce.

We ended up ordering a couple of other dim sum items for the side as this deal was only intended as a tasting menu and not a full meal. We had one of our favourites Char Sui Bun (£3.80) which was quite strongly flavoured with sauce that overwhelmed the meat inside. We also had some more Chicken Taro Croquettes (£5.00) which were really lovely and tasty – Lack of flavour is always a problem with taro but this certainly did not suffer from this problem.

We did not try any of the teas which look fantastic as does the patisserie on offer to the right of the front door.

This is not somewhere to get a cheap meal. But if you want the best dim sum in town and price is not an object, your search is over.

Rating: “Nearly perfect, but not quite”

Review Date: 2011-02-11

Cuisine: Chinese

Address: 15 Broadwick Street, London W1F 0DL

Public Transport: Tottenham Court Road