10 Greek Street

Yauatcha opened in 2004, a casual sister to Hakkasan. It serves all-day dim sum, with a similar approach to Hakkasan: smart décor, fast but slick service and small, closely packed tables. The restaurant is spread over two floors, a cavern of a dining space.

At this latest meal, we started with a trio of prawn and chive steamed dumplings (£16). The dim sum at Yautacha is well made, with thin dumplings and generous filling (15/20). The same goes for the classic har gau prawn dumplings (£12), with nice quality prawns flavoured with sesame oil and seasoning inside a thin wrapper of steamed translucent dough (15/20). Cheung fun (£12) is a steamed rice noodle roll filled in this case with char sui pork, which is just pork flavoured with soy sauce, hoisin sauce, five spice, rice wine and a touch of honey. These rolls can sometimes be slimy in texture but the rolls here were cleanly made and the honey-roasted pork filling was tasty (14/20). Duck salad (£28) was flavoured with pomegranate and pomelo along with cress. This was pleasant and added some greenery to the lunch, but was probably the least interesting dish that we ordered (13/20). Venison puffs (£14) were seasoned with black pepper and had a light pastry and a nicely flavoured venison filling (15/20).

Sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaf or lo ma gai (£12) is another dim sum classic, the rice stuffed with a centre of chicken, dried shrimp and salted egg yolk then wrapped in lotus leaf before steaming (14/20). We finished with well-made Singapore noodles, laced with prawns, squid and beansprouts, the noodles having good texture (15/20). 

Service was good, though given that the service charge of 13.5% was included on the bill, it was rather irritating to be presented with an option to add a tip on the credit card too. The bill came to £75 each with just jasmine tea to drink. It is hard to gauge a typical spend here as some dishes are considerably more than others, but set menus were available at £68 and £88, so I suspect that around £95 is a plausible cost per person if you share a bottle of wine. Yauatcha has stood the test of time, producing consistently enjoyable food despite its considerable scale.

Further reviews: 07th Mar 2012