Dragon Castle, London

By N1

I won a fellowship to visit Hong Kong and it seemed appropriate to
celebrate with dim sum. A few years back, I had gone to the Dragon
Castle with a friend on the advice of her Hong Kong Chinese mother.
Googling for dim sum places now, I found several rave reviews from
about that time - but also the suggestion that the chef might have
changed since then, with a consequent decrease in quality. We were in
the area, so we decided to give it a try.

The a la carte menu, whilst mainly Cantonese, also has what now seems
to be the obligatory few Szechuan dishes. Whilst I like Szechuan food
as much as the next person, China is a huge country (to get from
Guangdong, the capital of Cantonese cooking, to Chengdu, the capital
of Szechuan, takes one and a half days by train), and it’s hard to
believe a chef would be superlative at making more than one regional
cuisine. The dim sum menu at Dragon Castle also has xiao bai long
(Shanghainese dumplings) and even a couple of Thai and Vietnamese
dishes. Actually, Hanoi is nearer to Guangdong than Chengu is, so
arguably that’s no worse than the inclusion of Szechuan dishes.

We stuck to the Cantonese offerings, ordering: prawn dumplings (ha
gow), turnip and peanut dumplings, pork puffs, deep fried taro
dumplings, beef balls, and chicken feet. The waiter tried to dissuade
us from the chicken feet, and then to persuade us to get the warm ones
in black bean sauce rather than the cold ones marinated in rice wine.
But, despite being Gweilo, we like cold marinated chicken feet, so get
them we did. And very pleased with them we were too. The large “meaty”
feet had picked up a lovely flavour from the marinade and were served
with tasty pickles on the side. Those and the pork puffs were our
favourite dishes. Our least favourite were the beef balls, which were
not as aromatic and gingery as ones we have had elsewhere, and the two
sets of steamed dumplings, whose skin was just too thick. All the
other dishes were exactly as they should be, no better and no worse.
Some of the Chinese diners were having the congee (not on the English
menu, but on the Chinese order form, with translation) and that looked
very nice, with a generous amount of preserved egg and other bits
floating in it. I was eyeing it up for seconds, but we were just too
full to order anything more.

Our meal was fine but not special. N2 disagrees, insisting that the
chicken feet were very special and beat out the chicken feet from
elsewhere, but as a prawn-o-phobe* he doesn’t understand how important
decent ha gow are. Dragon Catle was certainly no better than standards
such as Royal China or Imperial China. I wouldn’t go out of my way to
eat at Dragon Castle, but I would eat there again if I was in the
area, although I would avoid ordering any dumplings.

* N2 would prefer that I call it an allergy, but since I have seen
him eat small bits of prawn by mistake, without it seeming to do him
any harm, I won’t deign to glorify his aversion and occasional bouts
of vomiting, which I hope one day to to cure him of.

Dragon Castle, 100 Walworth Road, London 

www.dragoncastle.eu