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

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.