Forgotten treats at Poon's

This review was published in November 2001.

The name of Poon's is well known in Chinatown, the family-run restaurants can be relied upon to deliver consistently good, pretty authentic food.

But a little further out in a faceless part of Bloomsbury is a rather more forgotten Poon's. Unlike its frantic siblings, when we visited for dim sum it was deserted - apart from a melancholy Chinese couple.

Perhaps it's something to do with the decor: an ossified homage to the decade taste forgot. The massive brass-framed holes in the wall and keyhole-shaped room dividers and the Abigail's Party dining furniture meant we wouldn't have been fazed by Austin Powers crashing through the plate glass windows. Cracked salt and pepper cellars - something I've not seen before in a Chinese restaurant - adorned the pink-tablecloths.

This, and the two waiters glumly reading the papers, didn't bode well. But the food was excellent, each dumpling freshly cooked, sparky with herbs or robust with savoury sauces. Pork puffs - sweet with hoi-sin - came cased in that curiously marshmallowy paste; potsticker dumplings with red vinegar dip were outstanding, subtly flavoured and cased in delicate flour skin; fried rice pasta (me: 'What exactly is that?'; waiter: 'It's rice pasta. Fried.') an intriguing exercise in gelatinous texture. Steamed dumplings - prawn and Chinese chive and pork with peanuts - soothed and sated. And, call me weird, but I even liked the decor.

Poon's
50 Woburn Place, WC1