Slipping into Zaika's limelight

This review was first published in December 2001

I've been puzzling over the decision by the Cuisine Collection - Claudio Pulze's portfolio of London restaurants - to shift the massively successful and Michelin-starred modern Indian Zaika from its sought-after spot on the Fulham Road to a site on High St Ken (which has already seen off a couple of high profile restaurants) and replace it with an untested Chinese.

I guess the philosophy must be that a hot restaurant in a dead site will still pull in the punters, and a new restaurant on a hot site will bask in the glory of its predecessor. If this is the case, it's been a spectacularly successful tactic because the newly-opened Shi Hon Mei (which means, apparently, 'to see, to smell, to taste') is already packed with diners, many of them - I know this from lurking by the reception desk - having come to find Zaika and remained through inertia.

Not that they'll have been disappointed; this nouveau-Chinese is a very slick operation: Chelsea-glossy and expensive looking: leather banquettes, parchment walls and minimalist lanterns. So it comes as something of a surprise that it's very reasonable. We spent about £80 for two, but that included a bottle of Alsace Gew¸rtztraminer, three starters, an intermediary course, two main courses and a number of side dishes. (Well, we did have to build up a full picture.) It should be easy to get away with a bill of about £50 for two.

Although it looks completely reconstructed, the menu contains a number of real standards - this is no Hakkasan . But there's enough innovation to keep you interested and some of the dishes are just fabulous: salt and pepper prawns with a sweet-sour chilli dip were tender with a liquoricey crunch in the coating; Peking dumplings were glorious - nylon-stocking-fine pasta, aromatically herbed pork filling.

A potentially bland salad of silky chicken, noodles and kelp seaweed was zinged by a kick of star anise in the dressing. Tempuraed soft-shell crab and lotus roots crowned with savoury stir-fried julienne of vegetables was just gorgeous, savoury limbs contrasting with the sweet crab meat and the perfumed roots.

We ordered a crispy chilli beef to see if it differed significantly from the highstreet version. Not massively, was the verdict; but it was flawlessly realised. If there were disappointments, I'd have to include the lemon chicken: tough chunks coated with almonds in an insipidly sticky sauce; and the side dishes of clammy spinach with sesame seeds and bullet-textured shallots with pallid peanuts.

The only sour note was sounded when my date, trying to avoid kippering our neighbours, asked if we could move tables to smoke. (The tables for two, as is commonplace nowadays, are virtually on top of each other; I had a splendid view down the crepey cleavage of the designer-clad creature next to us.) We were refused - no space, apparently. When we left, it was clear this was rubbish. Despite a generally excellent meal - and an injection of high style on something of a budget - it left an unpleasant taste in our mouths.

Shi Hon Mei
257-259 Fulham Road, SW3