SKZO — Restaurant in London

I am a professional chef who used to live in China (where incidentally the food is like a spiritual awakening, and nothing like the greasy and limited handful of dishes commonly found in the West, and misnamed "Chinese" )I nspired by my travels - I was in Hong Kong recently - and Fuchsia Dunlop's books, I have been systematically exploring well-reviewed Oriental restaurants in Central London, most of which I have found disappointingly mediocre, and not even up to the standard of the humblest family-run restaurant or food stand in mainland China, so imagine my surprise when I stumbled on this place.

It is so far not reviewed in any of the national press, as far as I'm aware, nor is it in any way pretentious, but the quality of cooking here is STUNNING. When the chef suggested that I try the Char Siu (Cantonese style barbecue pork) ramen, I was a little hesitant, as I have vegetarian tendencies, but it would have been rude to refuse, and I'm so glad I didn't, because it is divine ! Not only the pork, which I would have thought must lose its carefully acquired crust made with honey, five-spice powder, red fermented bean curd, dark soy sauce, hoisin sauce, and rice wine, in the wet environment of a ramen soup noodle, but actually it didn't, and remained both flavourful and firm, with a beautifully delicate char (not the same as Char 叉 in Char siu, which actually means fork， on which implement the meat was once roasted in ancient times).

Not only was the pork beyond perfection, but so were the noodles - the texture was not like the Sichuan 涼麵 Liang Mian cold noodles I was addicted to in Hong Kong, but rather a Japanese style noodle, which the restaurant buys in fresh every day. In China, noodles are often, but not always, made freshly on the premises, but this is by no means a panacea, as places in London that do this, such as the overrated Eat Tokyo chain, do it badly.

I can't wait to go back and sample...

A very unique dining experience with seafood platters & fish soup steamed in a traditional Yunnan-style stone pot! You can even change it into a Hotpot and add extra toppings. All of the ingredients are placed inside the stone pot at your table and cooked within a few minutes, so you can enjoy it freshly made at your table.

The Seafood platter had crab, prawns and mussels, it was simple but I felt like the steaming method helped retain most of the flavours, so it was extra juicy. I really enjoyed the Seabass Soup in particular which was so comforting and flavourful and the pork stomach & chicken hotpot soup made a nice pepperly soup-base for my favourite toppings like bean curd & Enoki Mushrooms. Grateful to have attended a preview of their stone pot dishes, I would recommend for a unique dining experience and a lighter, healthier hotpot meal where more emphasis is placed on the...

Miserable and expensive ! For some reason we were not given the hot pot menu ( perhaps they don't have it in English). We ordered a few dishes which were horrible. Tofu salad turned out to be a few cubes of tofu straight out of the fridge served on a bed of iceberg lettuce, a quarter of a tomato and drizzled on the top with Heinz Salad Cream ! Come on guys.. you couldn't have made less effort. The chicken katsu curry was edible but the chicken was roughly chopped up in order to disguise the tiny portion of chicken. Grilled eel on rice ... yes one small piece of eel chopped up (to make it look bigger ) doused in sweet sticky sauce from a bottle. Need I go on.. a small bowl of packet seaweed salad and two beers, sixty quid. This place could be so much better if they tried a...