Going to the docks

It's probably part of the whole inscrutability myth, but you can't help but feel that Chinese restaurateurs know something we don't. Why else would there be a new Chinese restaurant overlooking Albert Dock and City Airport?

About the only people who can find YI-BAN are HRH the Princess Royal and the Olympic rower Matthew Pinsent - Princess Anne because she opened the London Regatta Centre in 2000, and Mr Pinsent because the restaurant is on the first floor above the rowers' changing rooms.
Are the Chinese community already lining up grandstand seats for the rowing events in a Dockland Olympics? And how can they be so sure that our bid will be successful?

When you finally make it to Yi-Ban (a short trot from Royal Albert DLR station, on a road so new that it doesn't yet feature on the A to Z), you climb the stairs and go into a light and elegant room with a terrace looking over the water.

There's a long, purposeful-looking bar and a dining room reputed to be the only one in Britain with a licence to conduct weddings (the pioneers were Mat Jones and Cindy Hoa Hoang of Lewisham, who tied the knot last Sunday with a traditional Chinese ceremony followed by a Westernstyle reception).

Yi-Ban - which translates as "first class" - is an unnerving place, even at lunchtime early in the week. The restaurant is quietly humming, with plenty of Chinese families sitting down to dim sum. Many more centrally located restaurants would kill for this kind of business. The dim sum are good and cheap - perhaps that is the key. Snow pea dumplings are prawny, green- herby numbers; miniglutinous rice rolls are mini and suitably glutinous; the fried dishes are dry and crisp - sweet-and-sour wan tun, deep- fried seafood dumplings.

Strangely, there are no cheung fun on the menu here but you can indulge any whims for exotica by ordering chicken claws in black- bean sauce or steamed duck's tongues - these are very good, but fiddly to eat, which makes you wish that ducks were much larger. Most of the dim sum are around £2, with only a few straying up to £3 and beyond.

The lengthy main menu is "standard Chinese sophisticated": steamed scallops, baked lobster, honey spare ribs, lemon chicken, crispy aromatic duck with pancakes. Prices rise accordingly, but not so much that they sting. This is a very pleasant restaurant with a terrific view, smiling, helpful staff and bargain dim sum for lunch - not bad for a converted rowing club bar.

Yi-Ban
Regatta Centre, Dockside Road, E16 2QT