Golden Palace

A large proportion of Golden Palace’s menu is devoted to vegetarian dishes. Chinese menus often limit anything that isn’t meat or fish to just one section, but here every course, from ‘hot starters’ to ‘secondary dishes’ and ‘noodles’ has a vegetarian counterpart. Apart from the high-quality cooking, almost all other aspects of this sparsely decorated restaurant – from the white walls and blue carpet and chairs, to the wood-veneer reception – made little impact. Dim sum is very popular here and the place was pleasantly full during a weekday lunch. Steamed siu mai arrived packed with whole chunks of prawn and rich, fatty pork, while beef cheung fun, despite being quite chunky, was slippery smooth, spiked with water-chestnuts and infused with the sweet taste of dried mandarin peel. Chicken claws were soft and giving in their mild chilli sauce, and spare ribs were chewy and salty as expected, served on a bed of rice soaked with savoury sauce. Braised shiitake mushrooms with chinese broccoli and asparagus, stir-fried with garlic, contained burnt garlic nibs whose smoky flavour overpowered the whole dish; nevertheless, the green vegetables retained a perfect crunchy texture. Harrow has a gem here.