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A dim-summer night's dream: Park Chinois' perfect summer dim sum
Park Chinois in Mayfair features dumplings, DJs and the ultimate in Sunday afternoon decadence
As the long, languorous summer days begin to shorten, and the mercury starts to descend, the perfect place to spend your remaining Sundays could just be London's famed dumpling emporium Park Chinois.
Your Ibiza holiday might be behind you, but the good news is that the glamorous Mayfair restaurant has recently launched Twilight Dim Sum menus every Sunday that bring some of the best Ibiza DJs to the capital.
Unquestionably one of London's most lavishly appointed dining rooms, Park Chinois nevertheless has a casual atmosphere with live music, DJs and cabaret shows.
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But the star of the show is still the kitchen. For a deeper insight into how Park Chinois' perfect dumplings are made, The Week Portfolio was invited behind the scenes for a masterclass with the restaurant's Dim Sum head chef, Kin Min How.
We descend into the bowels of the restaurant where gleaming stainless steel worktops are surrounded by industrious chefs.
After suiting up, Kin Min shows us how to make the dough for the three types of dumplings we will be making today: traditional har gau, summer truffle bao and Shanghai pork gyoza.
Amid all the high-tech gadgetry of the restaurant's modern kitchen, a traditional Chinese balance scale is used by the chefs to measure out the ingredients. The copper rod, once referred to by westerners as an "opium scale" due to its use in opium houses around China in the late Qing Dynasty, has a longer history as a tool for weighing traditional organic Chinese medicines, herbs and yes, kitchen ingredients.
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This meeting of old and new is part of the charm of Park Chinois' kitchen, where new technology, ingredients and cooking techniques are fused with Chinese traditions that go back hundreds of years.
Kin Min's own skills seem rooted in decades, if not centuries, of muscle memory. Once the three doughs are made, he takes us through the intricate task of folding the dumplings.
They may take less than a second to eat, but the construction of the dim sums is decidedly tricky. Kin Min produces each one in about 20 seconds – we amateurs, meanwhile, take several minutes to create our only vaguely passable versions.
Aside from the immaculate shapes that emerge from Kin Min's kitchen, the quality of his dumplings is down to the exceptional ingredients that underpin them. The summer truffle bao benefit from generous shavings of that prized black diamond, mingled with a delicious mixture of locally sourced mushrooms. Park Chinois is selective with its suppliers, most of whom are UK-based friends and long-time collaborators. The same scrutiny is applied to the restaurant's fish and seafood suppliers, and farmers.
Four or five malformed, abandoned or deconstructed dumplings later we begin to get the hang of it, but there is no way we're going to be offered a job in Park Chinois' kitchen any time soon. Abandoning our aprons, we return to the restaurant upstairs to try the full array of options on the Twilight Dim Sum menu.
(Image credit: PETER KOCIHA Photography)
Our own efforts are served up – the baos' aesthetic failings disguised cunningly beneath large slabs of truffle. But the highlights of the meal are Cornish and Alaska crab wonton, jet-black cuttlefish and chive gau, blazingly hot Sichuan vegetable dumplings and delicious venison puffs – a perfect example of the eastern techniques and western ingredients for which the restaurant is known.
For all the exceptional flavours and textures on offer, my favourite is the humble har gau upon which I can almost certainly discern my own fingerprints – an inelegantly pleated attempt at producing something timeless; a prawn-and-pork dumpling that reaches back from this dimming London summer to the outskirts of Guangzhou, where the celebrated dumpling was born so many summers ago.
Twilight Dim Sum runs until 3 September at Park Chinois, 17 Berkeley Street W1, 020 3327 8888, parkchinois.com
Arion McNicoll is a freelance writer at The Week Digital and was previously the UK website’s editor. He has also held senior editorial roles at CNN, The Times and The Sunday Times. Along with his writing work, he co-hosts “Today in History with The Retrospectors”, Rethink Audio’s flagship daily podcast, and is a regular panellist (and occasional stand-in host) on “The Week Unwrapped”. He is also a judge for The Publisher Podcast Awards.
