London,

Cha Cha Moon

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Cuisine: Chinese
A meal for two with wine about £28 excluding service

15-21 Ganton Street, W1F 9BN

Nearest Tube: Oxford Circus or Piccadilly Circus

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Description: This Chinese noodle bar is owned by Alan Hakkasan Yau and offers traditional dishes such as chicken vermicelli noodle soup.

Phone: 020 7297 9800

Open: 11.30pm Fri & Sat, 10pm Sun

Dress code: Casual

Payment options: All major cards except Diners and Amex

 

 

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Waiting game: Mikky Hui Bin Chen at Cha Cha Moon

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How to eat out in a credit crunch? Slurp a bowl of roast duck noodle for £3.50. “You can’t go on the Tube for that,” said one of my companions last week as he ate wok-fried cod and bitter melon with black beans and glass vermicelli for the very same price at Alan Yau’s newly opened Cha Cha Moon.

The business pages of last Sunday’s papers carried stories of Sir Terence Conran selling his majority stake in the restaurant group D&D London, of Nobu being up for grabs — Richard Caring is rumoured to be buying — and reminded readers that earlier this year Yau sold Hakkasan and Yauatcha for £31 million to Tasameem, a property arm of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Some analysts believe, one article said, that these sales signal the top of the market for London’s hitherto buoyant restaurant scene.

Had all gone to plan, Yau’s timing with Cha Cha Moon, a concept destined to be rolled out, would not have appeared quite so prescient. The launch of the Ganton Street outlet was planned for last year but difficulty in recruiting chefs from mainland China, the necessity for correct gas power for woks and doubtless the time-consuming effect of being a perfectionist, held it up.

On the first night of trading last Friday — in meteorological terms the start of summer — few of the people crowding the surrounding streets seemed to have realised that a chic Chinese noodle bar had arrived in their midst. The restaurant name winking in pink neon could have been fronting a nightclub. It is only once inside that you see the long blonde wooden tables to share, reminiscent of Wagamama, which Yau originally created, and a kitchen behind glass where I counted nine Chinese and Malaysian chefs working in full view of customers.

It occurred to me that Chinese cooking is something that usually goes on behind closed doors. Here even the pass [serving counter] is low so that action at the woks, state-of-the-art noodle boilers and what I was told was a bespoke duck dryer can be observed.

Chefs and their equipment are at the service of quite a long menu divided into soup noodle, lao mian — meaning a dry assembly with broth sometimes served on the side — cold noodle, wok and sides. Every dish costs £3.50 and one dish can make a meal. We wanted to explore the more arcane as well as the familiar items and so committed the solecism of sharing. At this price you can afford to be reckless.

I marked up a menu and handed it to a waiter. Dishes arrived as and when they were ready. As well as the cod and bitter melon we tried cod and pickled cabbage with rice vermicelli. Both dishes had an air of healthiness and virtue that some of the meat-based assemblies like roast duck with wolf-berries, crispy duck lao mian and zhajiang mian with red-cooked minced pork, fermented soya bean, cucumber chilli and cu mian noodles more thrillingly did not.

My friend Kate said she liked the greasy, salty quality of some of the food. “Madonna won’t come here,” she reflected, “and neither will Gwyneth.” Well, they will be missing out.

Singapore fried noodle was a lesson in how this much-traduced dish should be. Side dishes of Szechuan wonton in chilli oil and spring rolls, tightly packed cylinders bursting with shredded carrot, cabbage, cloud-ear mushrooms and Chinese chives, were also superior versions of their usual manifestations.

Assuming that the menu pricing is calculated on the principle of what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts, apart from a rather drab item called beancurd roll, our many other choices all seemed to be swings.

Down one side of the room is a bar where staff wearing mauve T-shirts with the message “Are you going to the Moon?” shake and whizz cocktails, alcoholic and otherwise, based on fresh fruits and vegetables. Freshly pressed juices include holy vaasna (apple, carrot, cucumber) and chan chan tei (beet, spinach, pear). For wine, there is a choice of one white, a French sauvignon, one pink, a rosé from Italy and one Portuguese red. They are served in 250ml slender glass carafes but poured into the refined version of Duralex tumblers, the Gigogne.

A great deal of thought has gone into every detail of Cha Cha Moon. Even the list of soft drinks would seem to have been researched by someone with a PhD in the subject. Where else would you find Afri cola, Boylan clack cherry soda, Chinotto, San bitter, Iced Jasmine flower green tea, Calpico and Vitasoy malt all in one place? One of my pals was very excited to find Hong Kong tea, which has the richness of condensed milk. John Prescott should hurry along.

I dare say by now that word has got around — Prescott is there taking up more than his fair share of one of the benches and queues are winding into Ganton Street and Kingly Court. A little misting machine near the ceiling of the restaurant springs into life to stop the bamboo from cracking or warping. I had thought that it would create the atmosphere you get after a storm. It will be needed.

Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.

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