Chung Ying Central, Colmore Row, B3 3AP - 0121 400 0888
The best Chinese food I’ve eaten was served in a pokey student flat in the middle of Liverpool.
It was Chinese New Year 2003, the year of the sheep, and I was a skint student celebrating with a group of Chinese friends who had each brought a dish to recreate the sort of feast they’d have at home.
There was a Chinese version of pickled eggs, hard-boiled, roughly cracked in their shells and steeped in soy, spices and black tea (I think), leaving an alien looking web of brown veins across the egg’s flesh.
Someone brought beef dumplings and all 10 of us took turns at folding pork and spring onion wontons.
I remember taking home a hand-written recipe for whole trout, steamed with chilli in a banana leaf.
But the thing that stayed with me for years afterwards (other than a spontaneous health-and-safety-defying fireworks display in the car park) were the really basic vegetable side dishes.
There was a sort of shredded omelette mixed with raw tomatoes, peas and prawns gently flavoured with garlic and ginger, braised pak choi with coarse black pepper and a bowl of peeled cucumber chunks served in soy.
They were simple flavours from brilliantly fresh ingredients, a million miles away from the monosodium glutamate-drowned deep-fried goo you find in the standard anglicised Chinese takeaway (not that we don’t all love a bit of that when the time’s right).
So, it’s a sizable compliment to Chung Ying Central that the food here brought these memories flooding back.
The restaurant at the top end of Colmore Row, just a stone’s throw from the Council House, opened last month.
It’s the little sister of China Town’s Chung Ying which opened 32 years ago making it one of the oldest Cantonese restaurants in Birmingham (serving the best Chinese food in the Midlands according to last year’s Tsingtao Legacy of Taste awards).
A second venue, Chung Ying Garden, next to the Hippodrome has been open for 27 years and owner James Wong has gone for a hat-trick, hungry for a slice of Birmingham’s business district.
It’s more upmarket than your average Chinese restaurant, with decor in off-whites, blacks and greys.
The cutlery and chopsticks come in attractive origami envelope napkins.
Baby Chung Ying wants to appeal to its neighbouring offices by serving cakes at breakfast, dim sum at lunch and cocktails at clocking-off time.
Be warned, though, the two-for-one cocktails during happy hour have to be the same. That wasn’t explained to us when we ordered two from the same menu, so we were left with two spares.
There’s an “express lunch menu” for £10 or £12, and a tapas-style take on dim sum, with one dish for £4 or a mix of six for £20.
I’d be tempted back to try the cuttlefish cake, baby octopus in garlic and steamed caramel buns.
This time I opted for the steamed beef “Sui Mai” dumplings (£4).
Three fat portions arrived still in their steamer, delicately constructed and packing a pleasingly raw beefiness, unmasked by fake flavours and nicely complemented by a few drops of soy sauce.
My dinner date’s skewered chicken in satay sauce at twice the price had a fraction of the flavour with bone dry meat.
For mains we ordered the seafood and mangetout in a bird’s nest (£16) for me and the fried venison with ginger and spring onion (£15) for him. Beautifully presented in a “nest” of deep-fried noodles (too tough to eat), tender squid, scallops, juicy king prawns and crunchy peas were subtly flavoured with slithers of finely sliced, sweet roasted garlic.
In the mix were bright slices of carrot cut in the shape of doves, and at the side sat an amazingly intricate carved carrot rose.
It’s kitsch but I liked it.
The venison was a pleasantly plain and wholesome dish and the meat wasn’t overpowered by the onion or spices.
Typically anglicised Chinese dishes do feature on the menu with spring rolls, foo yung and sweet and crispy shredded beef all making an appearance.
But for the more adventurous diner there’s steamed chicken feet, soft shell crab and frogs legs all begging to be sampled.
The satay experience suggests this menu is hit and miss but I’d go back for the salt and chilli stuffed squid, the yuk sung lettuce wraps, fried aubergine Szechuan style and the steamed sea bass fillet.
While friendly and relaxed, the service was sadly more miss than hit.
We were served the wrong cocktails, the table wasn’t cleaned between courses (it was badly needed after our unimpressive chopstick efforts left us in a mess) and one waitress came to clear our drinks when they were still half full.
Asking for the dessert menu, I’d have preferred simply to be told there wasn’t one rather than being informed there has been no demand for desserts since the restaurant opened.
Is this the staff’s way of telling the customer she’s a greedy pig and it’s time to step away from the trough?
I did. And I left with the feeling that in attempting to appeal to a new audience, Chung Ying is trying to do too much.
There’s no point mixing average cocktails just around the corner from Ginger’s.
But if it sharpens its aim, smartens up its service, and ditches the dull stuff on the menu to tempt Birmingham’s business district to try a taste of real Chinese food, Chung Ying Central could be a winner yet.
Verdict
Food: 6.5/10
Atmosphere: 6/10
Service: 4/10
