I used to work in Knightsbridge. Harrods was my corner shop, simply because, if you wanted a pint of milk or a packet of Nurofen, it was the only place round there you could buy them. I tried to eat my way round its restaurants, but got into a mindset where four-grand handbags started to seem normal and ran screaming for the no 9 bus.
From my advertising agency’s windows, I watched the construction of horrible One Hyde Park (old ad joke: why don’t creatives stare out of the window in the morning? Because then they’d have nothing to do in the afternoon). A one-bed flat in this eyesore: £9m. One of the area’s fine, sane restaurants, the excellent Racine, has just closed, with chef Henry Harris citing “a shifting demographic in the area”, which sounds like tact for “I don’t sell gold-plated sushi, so that’s that.”
Which brings us to Chai Wu. I didn’t think Harrods could get any blingier, but it has. Its halls shimmer with lucre and throng with tourists to whom budget is a meaningless word. This new arrival is on the fifth floor – Shoe Heaven, sportswear, bubbling sashimi, going up! – an anomalous, clubby, low-ceilinged space crouched on a corner of the sales area.
It’s Chinese, apparently, but the bright, glass-fringed open kitchen is sending out all kinds of sushi and sashimi, too. Owner Eddie Lim also has outposts of his Mango Tree and Pan Chai empires in store, so I guess he knows his audience. He sure as hell knows how to charge: a bamboo steamer with six pieces of dim sum costs £32. Each dumpling is pimped with expensive ingredients, but is a claggy, chewy chore with the texture of elderly marshmallow: marshmallow with goji berry, “white truffle” (a sinus-clearing blast of oil), black truffle or gold leaf. There’s a fine, caviar-topped lobster dumpling, like a refugee from a different establishment.
Yes, there is good stuff. A Beijing duck, carved tableside, is beautiful: molasses-shiny, crisp skin, tender, fine-flavoured flesh. But to give you your £42 worth (for half!), it comes with a multitude of dips, including minced garlic and truffle oil with all the subtlety of elastic bands pinging over your tongue, pancakes and “mandoo” buns that bear more than a passing resemblance to Mother’s Pride. The duck comes back in a second serving minced to buggery, and piled into little gem leaves.
There’s a “small dish” of coconut prawns, enormous beasts the size of squat lobsters, three of them. At £21, this almost constitutes value. They are coated in quantities of toasted coconut, plus fried curry leaves, echoing a much-loved Singaporean dish, but twice as sickly – and so insistent that we’re both reminded of them for hours afterwards. Two lamb chops, to be chomped from their bones, are as fine as chops can be – great meat, perfectly cooked – but they’re the size of macarons, the “Sichuan sauce” looks very much like bottled, and they cost, when you factor in service, over £11. Each.
Ah, yes, service. I’m usually disposed to kindness, thanks to many formative years of waitressing, but this lot appear to have been trained by a double act of Young Mr Grace and Rosa Klebb. We’re led – in an almost empty restaurant – to a tiny, cramped booth by the till with an oblique view on to some pneumatic ski-wear, whereupon the FoH hover over our shoulders like a bad conscience. Here’s my training tip: when a customer has just rammed an unyielding, gold-leafed dumpling into her face, cheeks pouched like a hamster’s, don’t sprint over to demand “How is it?” Neither of us will come out of this looking good.
And the upselling! Gaspworthy. “Would you like some champagne?” as soon as you’re seated, to a heavily “recommended” list of specials, including Kobe beef at £160 a plateful. The menu throbs with caviar and lobster, wagyu and king crab. “Group executive chef” Ian Pengelly has said in an interview, “Our aim was to feature popular Chinese dishes but make them cool and give them sex appeal.” Yep, mate: if your idea of sex appeal is a hard-faced, Versace-clad rinse.
We spend £195 on a lunch that includes none of the splashy specials or spendy sushi, and one bottle of the kind of wince-inducing viognier they serve at bad book launches. Chai Wu is a stupid restaurant for stupid people. It’s in exactly the right location. It’ll probably do fabulously.
• Chai Wu Harrods, 87–135 Brompton Road, London SW1, 020-3819 8888. Open all week, 10am-8pm (Sun 11.30am-6pm). About £100 a head, including drinks and service.
Food 5/10
Atmosphere 3/10
Value for money 0/10
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