Review at a glance: ★★☆☆☆
Look, restaurant critics get special treatment, so you probably won’t have a beer spilt over you here. But I can’t guarantee it; it didn’t seem entirely out of keeping. Perhaps it’s just a thing they do? Chinatown once had a reputation for some of this stuff, Wong Kei making its name on a folklore of vaudeville grouchiness that, if it ever existed, has long been given up.
Song He Lou is subtler than chasing poor tippers out with knives, or chastising those on the tap water. But it’s not exactly a barrel of laughs. This is service built around an ideal of efficiency over indulgence. The menu is a lurid picture book, so no mistakes can be made with orders that are encouraged as swiftly as possible. Payment is taken up front. The food arrives while the echo of the card machine still trembles against the plain walls, staff determinedly cramming big plates on tiny grey tables. It’s not entirely clear if they want you to enjoy yourself.
This is an acknowledgement, not a criticism; restaurants needn’t all be run the same way, and prioritising speed over comfort has a validity of its own. It will appeal to those hungry or with time constraints. It allows for more turnover, benefiting the business. And whichever way it’s cut, if you’re in and out in a flash, it hardly matters if the seats are no more comfortable than those on a Tube platform. But it is worth pointing out that Song He Lou is not for those who dine out in search of comfort and coddling.
Besides, it’s had long enough to decide the way it wants to do things. Song He Lou can trace its roots back to 1757, making it younger than Wiltons (1742). Here as there, this history is carried lightly: it is acknowledged but not crowed about. There are no pictures of great-great-grandfathers, history lessons are not offered.
They have not rushed here, but nevertheless appear to be pioneering — I do not know anywhere else serving Suzhou-style noodles, or specialising in Jiangnan cuisine, though Bloomsbury’s Shanghai Family and Elephant and Castle’s Cheli are both said to offer something along these lines. Still, hard to say everything at Song He Lou feels entirely authentic: there’s chicken katsu if you fancy it. I suspect this is the result of an easy translation rather than a play to tourists who can’t find a Wagamama.
Those noodles, then. They’re the reason to come. Beautiful pale threads so uniform in size and colour they might have all been cut from the same bale of hay. They are delicate, fine things, and come in either white or red soup. The latter is a reddish-brown broth somewhere between Bovril and clay in colour, its surface mottled with magnifying discs of fat and specked with spring onion. This is a healing kind of broth, heavy with five spice, the kind of broth that cures hangovers and heartbreak and says not to worry about the heating bill. It is this to which I would return. It is solace liquified, the culinary opposite of the service.
There are other things to try. One the restaurant seems particularly keen on is the squirrel-shaped bass. At £37.80 for the set meal — this includes the soup noodles, though many of the set menus do, and most are under £20 — it is the most expensive item on the menu. It comes with a cherry coloured, allegedly sweet-and-sour sauce, though the latter appears to have been forgotten. It rendered the fish all but inedible for me, though it might have suited a knickerbocker glory. Anthony, an old friend, shrugged with indifference and the benefit of capped teeth. “But you know me,” he said. “I could drink sugar and give it a 10.”
This is a healing kind of broth, the kind that cures hangovers and heartbreak and says not to worry about the heating bill
The squirrel thing is a bit of a ruse, as it happens. The flesh of the filleted bass is, in fact, sliced into a porcupine haircut, fried and given peas for eyes. As disguises go, it’s down there with Clark Kent’s glasses. With it came surly preserved mushrooms, cucumber apparently pickled (briefly, it must have been) and bright red cherry tomatoes. We also had duck, chicken too. Jiangnan is new, unfamiliar territory to me, and perhaps this is how it’s meant to be. But, well, only the noodles delighted; the rest disappointed.
Spilt beer? Who cares. If it wasn’t for those noodles, that might have been the highlight.
22 Wardour Street, W1D 6QQ. Meal for two about £60; songhelou.net
