중국식 For a taste of China, follow the Dragon

[청석]

 

Dining Out

Lighten up time: Diners absorb the lakeside views at the Dragon Chinese Restaurant. — Photos courtesy of Ngo Xuan Phu

Snap happy: The writer’s choice, stir-fried green crab with spring onion (foreground), and old favourite fried flat noodles with beef (background).

Hanoi Hotel’s Dragon Restaurant

Address: D8 Giang Vo, Ba Dinh District, Ha Noi

Tel: (04) 845 2270

Hours: 11:30am-2pm, 6-10pm

Comment: Comfort with a twist

(09-09-2007)

For a taste of China, follow the Dragon

With Hong Kong cuisine and a capital view, Hanoi Hotel’s Dragon Restaurant stands out from the crowd. Marianne Brown takes a look.

In the face of torrential September rains last weekend, I determined to brighten up the day for me and my friends by making a lunch stop at arguably Ha Noi’s best-known eatery for Chinese cuisine, The Dragon Chinese Restaurant at the Hanoi Hotel. If not the most enlightening culinary experience, it was definitely a comfortable place to spend a rainy afternoon.

You’ll find the kitsch-style tower-block that is the hotel tucked away off busy Kim Ma Street in a quiet corner overlooking Giang Vo Lake. The reception area gleams with glass and marble, a clean contrast to the dusty – and in our case flooded – city roads outside.

We slithered across it into the newly-renovated restaurant and were immediately met with a soft wall of warmth, our soggy feet cushioned by deep red carpets. A waitress in a yellow and gold silk suit immediately took away our coats to dry. This unobtrusive, efficient service didn’t falter throughout our afternoon.

From the sparkling clear chandeliers hanging from insets in the ceiling, the light glowing from the rain-drenched view of the lake and the folded white linen, calm and comfort are the first two words to come to mind – and it’s quiet, an all too rare atmosphere enhancer in Ha Noi. There are also tasteful dots of colour about the place with red roses on the tables and pot plants by the many mirrors.

Although a Hot Pot buffet is available at weekend lunch times, we were more in the mood for a personal touch so we opted for the menu which certainly wasn’t short on choice.

Chinese food, of course, is a general concept. With its Hong Kong chef however, the Dragon specialises in authentic Hong Kong dishes with choices varying from the not-so-exotic noodle soup with beef, scallops or prawns (all between US$3-5), to vegetable sea cucumber dishes and higher end swift nest ($40) and shark fin soup ($35).

Vegetarians are not forgotten, with noodle, bean curd and sauteed vegetable options all at $6.

I selected the stir-fried green crab with spring onion and boiled rice on the side while my friend, with a slightly less adventurous palate, picked fried flat noodles with beef – in other words a rather familiar Vietnamese favourite – pho xao thit bo.

Some cool glasses of Tiger beer were also necessary to wash away thoughts of the gloomy weather outside.

As we waited for our food we nibbled on pickled vegetables with soy dipping sauce and peanuts and enjoyed the view of the rain contained safely behind the large glass windows. A gentle nudge alerted me to the chef standing by our table waiting for me to give the nod to a huge crab he was carrying in a bucket.

Not long later, the crab was plonked on the table. Besides being chopped up into manageable pieces, it didn’t look very different. But the key to the dish was its smothering of glutinous sauce thick with spring onions and chunks of ginger. After a five-minute wait for the shell crusher I attacked it with abandon. Luckily my friend was not offended by my messy efforts to get the crab meat out, which was tender, perfectly cooked and worked well against the more resistant texture of the ginger. Rice is a must to get the most of the sauce but it was very difficult to eat. This is not something you can do with chopsticks but there was no special cutlery to tease the meat out of the claws so I had to spend a lot of time dipping my fingers in the finger bowl and dabbing myself with a napkin.

My friend’s choice arrived soon after. Smoky and rich, the noodle dish is definitely a hearty filler for a rainy day. Again, strewn with spring onions, the beef wasn’t quite chewy and there wasn’t too much starch from the noodles to weigh you down too quickly.

Although there’s a good selection of desserts, light fruit platter ($6), sweet sago cream with coconut milk ($2) and for the ultimate Hong Kong taste experience – stewed superior swifts nest with rock sugar ($40) – our stomachs were already too taut to accommodate even a taste.

At $31.78 the meal wasn’t budget but soaking up the serene atmosphere was certainly worth a break from the rain.

I was told the restaurant is a popular lunch station for many businesses in the area and can get quite crowded, especially with the Dim Sum lunch buffet on offer.

However, with a lake-view, airy floor space and red roses, to me the Dragon also has the potential to be a successful romancing spot. But my advice is choose your dish carefully because licking your fingers is perhaps not the best way to kick off a first date. — VNS