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Review

Sumplace

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52 Dorset Street London W1
020 7486 5494

Price per person: £20 without drinks



Clichés are the bane of any journalist's life. So you can imagine my concern at having to review a dim sum restaurant called Sumplace. Would the restaurant be as painful as its namesake? Thankfully not, as I was rewarded with intricate, original and appetizing dim sum.

Dim sum is by its very nature neat, delicate and refined: something Sumplace tries to emulate with its surroundings. One can eat in either the cave-like restaurant-bar downstairs, or the main room with its glass partition, hiving it off from next door's restaurant. Interesting if you want to spy on what others are eating, disconcerting if you've ever been in an aquarium.

But this is characteristic of a restaurant which attempts to turn every preconception on its head. Some critics may argue that dim sum should not be tampered with: if it ain't broke, don't try and fix it. Yet chef Richard Chan has managed to take traditional dishes and give them an international twist. So the menu offers fried calamari (more reminiscent of Spain than China) or the South American-sounding crispy mussels with a fajita sauce. Both are competently achieved, tender and crunchy, but not ground-breaking. The steamed sum dishes are more successful: the aromatic mussel soup is light and tasty, made up of three huge parcels of tender mussels in a coconut, mango and lemongrass broth.


Many other dishes are just as fine and diverse: crispy duck comes ready assembled (a fantastic idea: chefs, please take note) in wonderful pancakes, the papaya salad is refreshing and a perfect accompaniment to the fried sum on offer. Some are less successful: the yam cake is little more than a slice of tasteless potato and shrimp and the five spice chicken square feels rather bland and processed. With little room left for dessert, my companion and I shared poached apple with green tea sauce – a light, cleansing dish of apple in cinnamon and the afore-mentioned tea which rounded off the meal delightfully.

There is a wide selection of drinks to accompany this Oriental tapas, with Richard assuring us that beer or cocktails go best with dim sum. I can vouch that his Lychee Martini is good enough to be had with or without food.

This should give you some idea of the variety that is available, but be warned – this diversity comes at a price. With most of these bite-sized dishes around the three to four pound mark, do keep a check on your bill. Should you disagree with the restaurant's suggestion that "a full meal is too much food", you may find yourself paying a hefty sum.