Hunan

It's been awhile since I've had a restaurant worth writing about, but today the Hubs and I went to Hunan for lunch, the date he'd planned after three years of hinting (but he got it right!). Hunan specialises in small portion Chinese food, on a no-menu basis. The first thing I want to mention is that it was incredibly good value. This is hard to come by in London, but we had fourteen courses and two good half bottles of wine for a grand total of £100. The wine is the easiest to describe, there was an Albarino and a Pinot Noir. Both were excellent and both came to a grand total of £30. I always struggle to find a good wine for Chinese food - whites gets drowned out by spices and the reds drown out the non-spicy flavours. It was great to be able to get two good choices, plus Oolong tea, of course.

Forget the wine though. The food was the winner. Here's what we had (and did I say it came to £100 for both of us? With £30 in wine?):
- Minced chicken wrapped in lettuce
- Steamed bamboo cup soup with beef and pork dumplings (and fried shallots, oh my, yum)
- Salt & pepper green beans
- Spare ribs
- Spicy chilli beef
- Frogs legs with minced pork
- Sesame pork with plum sauce
- Steamed king prawns (this got the Hubs into such a tizzy that he offered to make all the cushions for the house. When I questioned this, he revealed that not only was he his school knitting champion for having knit a thirty foor snake, he was also the school cushion making champion, having knit fifty cushions. Six years and it's constant surprises. And hilarity)
- Spicy squid (with the yummy burned on the BBQ taste)
- Spinach rolls
- Beef & beans in sesame sauce
- Sea bass
- Crispy duck
- Apple & banana toffee fritters with chocolate ice cream

YUM. The only bad thing was that sometimes the food tasted a little salty, and that we were absolutely stuffed. It was such a struggle at the end. Still, it was brilliant and it made us realise that dating in London didn't have to be Michelin and expense. In January it's Damien Hirst at the Wallace.