If you fancy some Chinese cuisine which is slightly more authentic than the questionable takeaway over the road then head to Min Jiang in Kensington High Street. 

Overlooking Kensington Gardens, on the tenth floor of the Royal Garden Hotel, this Chinese restaurant offers a menu of culinary delights with fabulous décor and service to match.

Walking into the restaurant, you’ll notice Chinese blue and white vases and eye-catching red walls lined with black and white photography. Panaramic windows show off the view over the gardens. 

We sampled a few of the starter dishes including dim sum, crispy fried squid and cold drunken chicken. The highlight was the deliciously different crispy duck skin in fine granulated sugar. 

For the main course, we couldn’t resist the chef’s special – wood-fired Beijing duck. This needs to be ordered in advance and the chef will even come over to your table to carve the duck in front of you.

This elegant restaurant comes highly recommended for Chinese cuisine at its very best. 

Min Jiang, Royal Garden Hotel, 2-24 Kensington High Street, W8 4PT

Happy Chinese New Year!

In honour of the Year of the Tiger, this week we’re asking you for your favourite Chinese Restaurant in London.

Whether you love going to one of Alan Yau’s places for a treat (Hakkasan, Yauatcha, Cha Cha Moon), or have a favourite local budget option, or always frequent the same special place in Chinatown, this is the time of year to celebrate your love of Chinese food.

Let us know where you think the dim sum dazzles, the noodle soup has you salivating and where you can get a mean chow mein.

Noodles, rice, sweet and sour, fireworks, and… tigers?!

What a combination! Strange I know, BUT it’s Chinese New Year: the Year of the Tiger, and it falls on Valentine’s Day, 14 February. Now, I know I’ve already mentioned you should take part in Magic 105.4′s charity Gala Performance of Dirty Dancing on Saturday… so why not go for it this weekend, and join in the Chinese New Year Celebrations on Sunday as well?

If staring into your loved-one’s eyes in the privacy of your own home or over dinner at a romantic London restaurant is top of your list, you can still join in the China Town Association’s celebration on Sunday 21 February. There’ll be an amazing display in Trafalgar Square celebrating the New Year. It’ll be so much fun for the kids. My two daughters are doing a project on Chinese New Year at school, so you know where I’m going to be next Sunday! 

Firecrackers, dragons, lions… the one thing I’m really looking forward to are the Chinese acrobats. They always put on such a spectacular show, full of colour, vibrancy and energy; I can just imagine children wanting to join in the fun.

The great thing about Chinese New Year is that there’s so much for the whole family to do. The two events I’ll be taking my girls to over half term are workshops at the following :

• National Maritime Museum – arts and crafts workshops making Chinese head dresses, good luck flags and watching performances from the Greenwich Chinese Community School

And

• Straight after my show on 20 February, I’ll be making my way down to Westfield’s Shopping Centre where the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China, having officially opened the Spring Festival, will be putting on a display of Chinese dance, acrobats, and plays performed by children of Chinese origin

Now, the one thing I haven’t mentioned is food. You can’t celebrate Chinese New Year without having a good Chinese meal! So it’s prawn crackers, chicken in black bean sauce and special fried rice for me, in the heart of Chinatown!

Happy Chinese New Year (and happy half-term) to you all, and let me know what you get up to!

This week, I was invited to the launch of Chinese Cricket Club, a new restaurant at the Crowne Plaza in The City.

The venue has unusual decor for a Chinese restaurant, with pictures of cricketers behind the bar and a distinct hotel feel that belies the quality and general scrumptiousness of the food. 

Head Chef Brendan Speed (formerly of Zuma Istanbul) and his team provided wonderfully spicy orange beef, steamed prawn dumplings, succulent lobster in the shell, soft shitake mushrooms, zingy squid, miniature hot and sour soups, and a light coconut mousse with tropical topping. 

As far as I could see, the hungry work crowd thought it was simply delicious, and so did I!

Guests quaffed champagne and Jim Barry wines while they watched one of the chefs whip up dumplings. 

It was extraordinary how he picked an identically sized piece of pastry off a roll, smacked it with a cleaver into a circle, and filled and pleated it so evenly. 

Chinese Cricket Club is named after the newly formed Chinese national cricket team and also celebrates the recent translation into Mandarin of the laws of cricket.

The association with Jim Barry wines extends the cricket theme: one of the Jim Barry vineyards has a cricket pitch in the middle, and the wine of choice at the launch was Cover Drive cabernet sauvignon.