Picture of Silk Road, SE5 8TR

Historical version 25 of Silk Road, SE5 8TR (view current version)

Chinese cafe-style restaurant and takeaway on Camberwell Church Street in Camberwell, specialising in food from Xinjiang, a large autonomous region in the northwest of China where the default meat is lamb (rather than pork, as in most of the rest of China).

Its Chinese name is 新疆風味 (Xīnjiāng fēng wèi), which roughly translates as something like "Xinjiang local flavour". The menu is in Chinese with an English translation — see Kake's Flickrset with photos of the menu. The decor is quite plain, and the seating is at long tables with wooden benches photo. Note that as of September 2010 they're cash only.

When nine of us visited on a Monday evening in September 2010, the place was busy — it's a good thing we'd booked. Service was still good, efficient and friendly. The food was generally quite tasty, although the dumplings (£2.50/10) photo and the famed lamb skewers photo (80p each) didn't particularly impress DrHyde; there was nothing wrong with them, they just didn't stand out. (Kake agrees — the spices on the lamb skewers were overwhelmingly powdery rather than flavourful, and the meat wasn't as deliciously crisped as I'd been hoping. And when DrHyde visited again in August 2011, the lamb skewers were again not that great, although everything else was lovely, especially the twice-cooked pork belly.)

The big plate chicken (£15) photo was delicious, though; the flavours in the gravy were much more complex than in the other dishes, and the chicken was neither mushy nor bland. Both Kake and Laura wished we'd ordered more of this.

Home style aubergine (家常茄子/jiā ché qié zi; £5) photo, although not really a Xinjiang dish, was one of Kake's other favourites; the aubergine was peeled before cooking to a perfect texture, and the sauce was quite balanced if fairly nonspecific in flavour.

Spicy salad/tiger salad (老虎菜/lǎo hǔ cài; £3) photo was cruder than renditions Kake has had elsewhere, consisting simply of large chunks of tomato and onion topped with handfuls of fresh coriander. Mixed shred salad (拌三絲/bàn sān sī; £3) photo was similarly simple; nicely garlicky dressing, but dominated by the glass noodle vermicelli rather than an even mix of the three shreds advertised (carrot and spinach should have been the others).

Cabbage in vinegar sauce (醋溜白菜/cù liù bái cài; £4) photo was somewhat unbalanced, with the vinegar flavour coming across as harsh rather than tangy. Sour and hot shredded potato (酸辣土豆絲/suān là tǔ dòu sī; £4) photo was better, though, with the potato slivers nicely judged to be crisp yet not undercooked.

Despite the meaty nature of much of the menu, the vegetarian in our party was as happy as the rest of us. But best of all was the price: 9 of us pigged out for only 15 quid each, including booze and tip.

secretlondon visited some time previously, on a Sunday evening in February 2009. I had lamb with noodle and egg (£7) photo, 10 dumplings (£3) photo and a pot of tea (£1). Background music sounded like Chinese easy listening.

Kake's verdict: It's a testament to the quality of regional Chinese food currently available in London that I can even think of criticising the food we had here. It was certainly all a lot better than your average generic Anglicised Chinese, it was very cheap, and it's the only place I've ever had Xinjiang food in London. I just felt that it wasn't quite as good as all the rave reviews had led me to expect, which is more to do with me than with the restaurant.

See also:

Last visited by DrHyde and some tourists he was chaperoning, August 2011.
OS X co-ord: 532783 OS Y co-ord: 176738 (Latitude: 51.473516 Longitude: -0.087897)
This is version 25 (as of 2011-09-12 15:44:53). View current version. List all versions.