Picture of Red And Hot, NW1 1JD

Historical version 14 of Red And Hot, NW1 1JD (view current version)

Sichuan restaurant just off Euston Road, between Euston Station and King's Cross St Pancras Station. They aim for authenticity of atmosphere as well as cuisine; laughing and talking loudly is encouraged.

The menu is divided into cold dishes and hot dishes; a page at the front of the menu suggests that the best way to order is to have all your dishes arrive at once, rather than starters followed by main courses. It also explains that the usual custom is to have your meat/fish/veg dishes first and then plain rice at the end, "to make sure that you're full", but you can have your rice earlier if you prefer. On both Kake's visits so far, we did in fact ask for our rice to come with the other dishes, and I do think this is the best way to do it, since it lets you cleanse your palate between dishes. There's no rice section on the menu; I don't know if there's any choice other than plain rice, but I don't think anything other than plain rice is really necessary.

Kake, claud, [Juliette]?, and Sam visited on a Tuesday evening in June 2007. When we arrived at 8pm, it was reasonably quiet, but got busier and noisier (though not unpleasantly noisy) later on. We'd booked, but probably didn't really need to.

The first dish we decided on was a cold one, "strange-flavoured rabbit"; it wasn't particularly strange but was certainly good (mind out for the bits of bone, though). Two of our three hot dishes were ones I'd had before, but these renditions were among the best I've tried: fish-fragrant aubergine, and ma po tofu (a replacement for the preserved egg dish we'd wanted, which was off the menu that day). We also ordered fire-exploded beef tripe, which turned out to be a good contrast to the other dishes. Some reviewers have complained that the dishes here seem to lack variety, all involving "a slick of fierce-looking red oil"; I do see their point, but I recommend they try the beef tripe. Our fifth dish was chicken in Chong Qing special sauce; rather soupy, and not hugely interesting. Five dishes, a £20 bottle of Rioja, and plain rice for four came to £78 including service.

Kake's next visit was on a Saturday lunchtime in April 2008; again, we'd booked for our party of three, but really hadn't needed to as the place was empty when we arrived at 12:30pm and stayed almost entirely empty throughout our meal. Strange-flavoured rabbit and fish-fragrant aubergine were again good; we also tried the dry-fried green beans (very good), the drifting-fragrant prawns with cumin (excellent flavour but slightly overcooked), the stuffed wonton dumplings (perfectly fine), and the hot and sour soup (disappointingly lacking in complexity; the only note that came through sufficiently was the sourness). These five dishes, plain rice for three, soup for three, tea for three, and two large bottles of water came to £66 including service.

Service on this second visit was a mix of amusingly incompetent (when spoken to in English) and acceptable (when spoken to in Mandarin). They refused to give us tap water, and they only had one kind of tea.

The "interesting" names of dishes are direct translations from the Chinese, according to claud. The hotpot menu used to come only in Chinese, but as of April 2008 it's available in English.

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Last visited 19 April 2008 by Kake et al.
OS X co-ord: 529840 OS Y co-ord: 182775 (Latitude: 51.528458 Longitude: -0.128029)
This is version 14 (as of 2009-11-30 11:32:09). View current version. List all versions.