Detour

Detour’s name could well be derived from the maze-like hutong the restaurant is housed in. On a weekday lunchtime the small dining room is empty and the waitress sits at the front window watching the street life. But it’s easy to imagine that with a few customers, Detour would have a pleasant buzz.

The light Yunnan fare offers diners a chance to sample produce little known outside the southern province. A vegetable called tai cai (18RMB), served as a cold dish, arrives as olive green stem-like segments, tossed in a light oil. The segments are as crunchy as pickled vegetables. The jasmine flower salad (18RMB) also comes cold, with a soft, delicate flavour rather than the strong jasmine essence that infuses the ubiquitous tea. Another must-order dish is thumb vegetable (24RMB), which is indeed the size and shape of a thumb, and tastes like a cross between a mange-tout pea and a green pepper.

Braised fish with spicy sauce and noodles (58RMB) may lack the latter, but the enticing sauce, with its perfect play of sour and spicy flavours, shreds of ginger, pickled vegetables and coriander, more than makes up for it. Even better, the fish doesn’t have that dirty river taste found in many fresh water varieties. Rice in bamboo (15RMB) is a soft, almost sweet glutinous rice studded with a few peanuts. It could easily serve three people. In fact, all Detour’s portions are generous.

The menu is in Mandarin and English, so non-Mandarin speakers will find it easy to navigate, although staff, while attentive, may create a small speed bump with their lack of English.