New Loon Fung, Glasgow - Restaurants in Glasgow | s1play.com

Full of Eastern promise

Review published on 22/02/2007 © Sunday Herald

Whenever I eat in a Chinese restaurant, I'm on a mission to get beyond the popular Sino-British specialities – crispy seaweed, lemon chicken et al – and penetrate what I call the Chinese-Chinese menu.

There are plenty of takeaways run by Chinese people, servicing a conspicuously non-Chinese clientele, that have flourished by selling a very different repertoire of food from that which their proprietors themselves eat. More interesting are those restaurants which do have a big Chinese clientele. There is the odd one, such as the Chinese/ Malaysian Asia Style at Glasgow's St Georges Cross, that remains fairly true to the cuisine of its mother country and makes precious few concessions to hackneyed occidental expectations.

But there are rather more establishments, like the New Loon Fung in Glasgow, that have a somewhat schizophrenic character as their kitchens cater side by side for two distinct markets: the Scots, who want what they know, and the Chinese, who also want what they know. And so you have the strange situation where two worlds dine under the same roof, but eat different dishes with different levels of authenticity.

On the odd occasion, I've been lucky to crack the system by eating with Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking friends. They are a key to identifying the core Chinese menu.

At the palatial New Loon Fung, I was not so fortunate. Short of walking over to a table of Chinese people and asking what they were eating, it was back to deciphering the menu. The New Loon Fung has at least three tiers of menus.

First, (in English), is the standard British choice that all the non-Chinese Scots go for. We were surrounded by Scots eating prawn-fried toast, spare ribs, Peking duck and a couple of stir-fries. Jolly good the food looked too. Second, you come to a dramatically more Chinese menu whose translation, full of references to "fish lips", "fish maw", "pig skin" and "intestine" might prove daunting to all but the most adventurous diners. Third, (in Chinese script) comes a mystery fixed-price menu.

We gathered from our waitress that the mystery menu had lobster, pork and duck. How cooked? We hadn't a clue. But we ordered it anyway. Waiting for it to arrive, I fretted enviously watching other non-Chinese tables tucking into delicate parcels of shredded duck, but then the huge platter of lobster arrived. It seemed like two lobsters' worth of succulent, fleshy morsels, expertly cracked so as to part easily from the shell. The crustacean glistened in a mellow, but pungently garlicky sauce with lots of spring onions and teaspoonfulsized chunks of fresh root ginger which we ate as a vegetable. It was splendid.

We realised that we had made a mistake when the next course turned up because it would have needed another two diners to eat it. A voluminous quantity of food featured slices of bouncy, freshtasting prawn cake – essentially pulverised prawns – served on fragrant, stir-fried pak choi that had a distinctive smoky wok personality, and duck that tasted as though it had been braised with rice wine, soy, cloves and five spices. The duck was accompanied bya marmalade-like dipping sauce and hot, browned peanuts. Most unusual of all was the pork belly, with a crisp, intensely aromatic skin, served cold, almost like a picnic dish. The plain boiled rice was extremely good, each grain smooth, polished and distinct, but still sticky enough to form into firm little balls. What a relief when the set dessert turned out to be fresh orange, cut into eighths, and crunchy green grapes.

On reflection, the meal was too heavy in protein, but otherwise, quite nice and inexpensive. Above all, we liked the place, a large dining room richly appointed with velours walls in opulent cardinal red and imperial gold and a mirrored ceiling embossed with exotic birds, fire-spewing dragons and lily ponds.

Best of all, it has a thick carpet that absorbs noise, which makes for a soothing dining experience. How agreeable to be able to communicate without shouting over din.

© Sunday Herald

Hitting the right notes

Review published on 01/02/2010 © Sunday Herald

The turbot? To this day I’m not sure who ordered it. All I can say is that when it arrives at the table – whole, steamed in ginger and spring onion – its dead eyes momentarily meet my surprised ones, and we bond as outsiders.

It’s been one of those evenings. From the minute Jackie emerges from the booming basement karaoke party to the moment she leaves to rejoin it, I won’t have much of a scooby about what’s going on. At various times we will be joined at the table by young Chinese dudes who drape themselves laconically across it, consider me curiously, and chat in Cantonese before departing to a sudden surge of noise as the door to the basement opens and closes.

Amid the general hubbub, the buzz and hustle of the place, the staff from the SeeWoo Chinese restaurant will occupy two tables near us. On a night out, apparently. There will be occasional nodding and chatting between Jackie and them – but, as I don’t speak Cantonese, it passes me by.

What I do get is this: the Loon Fung, arguably Glasgow’s oldest Cantonese restaurant, has come back to life after a few years in the doldrums. There is a good mix of Chinese and non-Chinese people in here, it’s well-lit, and the staff are pinging about with the obligatory dishes of chicken feet for Chinese tables and more mainstream dishes for the others. Yes, I’ve tried chicken feet before. Not for me. Though I’m told it’s all about crunch and flavour being better near the bone. Really.

The toilets have been moved and karaoke rooms specialising in Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean, Malaysian and British music have been created in the basement. Crikey. As we sit up here, there are people downstairs drinking beer, eating food and singing their heads off. Gone are the two menus of old – an idiotic one in English and an impenetrable one in Cantonese – and in their place is an interesting bilingual version. There’s a list of daily specials in English and Cantonese on the table, too – though it might as well be in Vulcan for all the use it is to me tonight. Instead, my meal just arrives. Or does the manager bring what he fancies? Haven’t a clue.

I can’t complain, anyway, as the whole idea of meeting interpreter Jackie here is to see what Chinese people like to eat. And here’s what we’re having. There are delicious steamed scallops, served in the shells with fine noodles and garlicky, oily sauce to start. There’s soft-shelled crab, crisp and crunchy in batter and on a huge platter. This is good, but not as good as Asia Style’s round the corner. There’s another enormous platter of dark, glistening aubergine stuffed with minced prawn: wet, rich, slightly sweet and totally different, but perhaps a bit of an acquired taste. The best of the lot? Crisp fried pork belly with chilli, spring onions and soy, which is simply outstanding.

And my friend the turbot? I wouldn’t have ordered him, frankly. A steamed fish is a steamed fish is a steamed fish, after all. The ginger and spring onion make little impact on the dense, white meat – which tastes, as I always find with turbot, slightly muddy.

The bill will reveal that it’s £27 for the whole fish, which is reasonable, and £86 for the meal, which is not outrageous. As an added bonus along the way, Jackie has translated the pictograms on the menu, which has been illuminating. One Szechuan dish turns out to mean “old man–weird sauce–clay pot”. Hey, I’ll never again look at them and wonder what culinary details I’m missing.

Overall, then? I’ve enjoyed it. A restaurant with life. A restaurant with interesting food. A restaurant that is once again easily accessible to non-Chinese people. And a restaurant that, if you pick your own stuff from the menu, should leave you with a considerably smaller bill than mine, I suspect. Give it a try. I probably will again.