Sure to make it

The moves and manoeuvres of Chinese chefs are usually shrouded in mystery or anyway tend to go unreported. It was in a roundabout sort of a way I discovered that chef Ning Cheung and manager Giuliano Movio had left the Kensington branch of Memories of China to open MADE IN CHINA in Fulham Road.

The restaurant occupies a site which was for a while I Cardi and then even more briefly Tipico. Italian restaurants are indeed typical of the area but so are Chinese restaurants adapted to suit what are perceived to be Western preferences.

I can't make up my mind whether I think Made In China is a good joke as a name. The restaurant is not full of cheap gadgets, little embroidered silk purses or racks of trainers. The decor is, in fact, restrained almost to the point of non-existence but for the lacquerred bar at the back and an Oriental style of border applied around the edges of the ceiling. Unadorned walls are painted a mushy apricot colour, more Tuscany than Taiwan.

Last week, a notice on the window announced an opening deal of 30 per cent off the price of food until the end of the August. It might interest proprietors of restaurants currently struggling that this had a galvanising effect on passing trade. They poured in and filled up the tables.

Michael Chow at his Knightsbridge restaurant, Mr Chow, first had the bright idea of bringing together Italian service and Chinese food, two elements much appreciated by restaurant-goers. The only problem was that after a while the waiters tended to lose their natural brio when having to handle noodles of a different kind.

The Italian manager at Made In China has that innate ability constructively to fuss over his clientele and has as well attractive young Oriental chaps helping him. The two who brought a small table to extend our surface capacity - 30 per cent off had four of us ordering feverishly - offered to sit down and join us.

In choosing we had paid attention to the asterisks punctuating the long list of dishes which indicate chef 's specialities.

Some of those I remember from Memories of China. In the first course, two specials were moneybag chicken - deep-fried filo pastry purses holding chicken, prawn and Chinese mushrooms served with a spicy dipping sauce - and sesame chicken with seaweed constructed on the principle of sesame prawn toast garnished with ribbons of deep-fried kale.

Both were fine but we liked even better the very well-prepared saltandpepper squid scattered with minced garlic. Steamed scallops with glass noodles lacked that snowy look you want in scallops and stuck to their shells, as if glued.

As an interim course we chose Mongolian barbecued lamb in lettuce wrap, which is perhaps healthier than crispy duck in pancakes but not so profoundly enjoyable. Soft-shell crab was wonderful with none of that murkiness of entrails that can spoil it.