I’m always a little suspicious of dining out at banquets with large numbers of people because usually I don’t get any choice in what I eat or by whom I sit and normally I can’t bear the level of noise. But somehow, Cantonese food, especially around the time of the lunar new year, seems to be more appropriate than most other cuisines for participation in a mass consumption event.
Thus it was I found myself dining at the hoary, even venerable, old Birmingham restaurant, Chung Ying Cantonese, in the exotically named Chinatown district of the city centre (though how many people of East Asian heritage actually live there is a moot point) with a rather larger group of people than I would normally choose to do so. Chung Ying was first opened in 1981 by the married couple, Siu Chung and Yuk Ying Wong, and the running of it was taken over by their son, James Wong, in 2010. A sister restaurant, Chung Ying Central, was opened in Colmore Row but has since closed.
It’s true to say that the restaurant has probably seen better days. Entrance to it is through a rather unlikely small and uninviting door and the inside place looks very much as though the decor is desperately in need of complete refreshment and perhaps a little more needs to be spent on the lighting bill. But the service was good - despite the large number of people attending the banquet the food came out efficiently and swiftly and was pleasingly hot on arrival at the table.
The servings were generous and generally comfortingly delicious - they represented the unchanging face of British style Chinese food with the same appearance as they would have had when Chung Ying first opened 41 years ago. This might have been depressing had not the food been really very enjoyable in an unsophisticated and unpretentious way.
The dishes were clichéd but none the worse for that - as starters there were crispy spring rolls with sweet chilli dipping sauce, salt and chilli chicken wings and gorgeously succulent and meaty Peking style spare ribs. It was sticky finger time and the offer of a finger bowl might have been helpful. But gorging like a Labrador whose meal has arrived late, I and the rest of the diners ploughed on to the main courses.
The point is that they really were very good. Rustic in a Birmingham Cantonese restaurant sort of way but all essentially very tasty and a good balance of spicy and less hot dishes served with a very satisfactory fried rice. We did not wander far from the road of safe choices - sweet and sour chicken, crispy shredded beef with chilli, a splendidly peppery black bean sauce dish with beautifully tender lamb and salt and chilli prawns.
This left me thinking why in these present times, do we go ou to eat rather than dine at home? The basic underlying reason of course is that so few younger people are taught anything about food and preparing it and so it is therefore necessary to consume food that someone else has prepared. Of course it was easy for men in the 1950s, they married women who were taught by their mothers and at school to be the preparers of food in the household. Now the British, male or female, often do not even know how to peel a potato.
So reheatable food must be bought ready prepared from the supermarket or ordered from local food providers as ‘takeaways’ or, in the final instance, food must be eaten in restaurants and other dining establishments away from the home.
The main reasons to visit restaurants are -
1. To enjoy a special occasion social gathering often to commemorate notable personal or family events and anniversaries. The type of establishment dined in will still often depend on the social status and financial income of the host and participants.
Which brings us to -
2. A division of choice of restaurant, once the diner’s social and financial status has been taken into account - is the diner going to a particular restaurant principally to -
A. Eat and derive a sense of comfort and repletion from it (a worthy enough reason in itself)? or
B. To become a consumer of food as art which undoubtedly it is in the hands of a creative, imaginative chef?
This is where food guides go adrift. Many dining establishments serve good food though it may be pleasingly comforting and filling rather than artistically presented as though invented in the eye of a contemporary painter who additionally has paid attention to the textures of the items on his plate, as well the presence of enticing smells coming from it and, most important of all, the deliciousness and originality of the flavours. The achievement of pleasing so many senses rather than just the visual or the auditory which most artists set out to do really does raise the great chef to the heights of the great artist. Of course many chefs do not want to be thought of as great artists and many who do are not successful in doing so because they do not have the abilities or the dedication or the training or a sufficient gastronomic intelligence. The food of these unartistic chefs can still be good food even though food guides, certainly the more snooty, may decide not to recognise food which they do not see as art even though that food may be delightfully comforting and enjoyable.
The food at Chung Ying Cantonese was certainly enjoyable though the restaurant is rather shabby. I enjoyed my evening at the banquet and would happily dive into another dish of any of the food presented to me at that meal. If not artistic in terms of delicacy of presentation perhaps it was artistic in terms of delivery of flavour.
Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛
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