House of Ming, an opulent Chinese restaurant with branches worldwide, was established in India in 1978 and has now opened close to Buckingham Palace in London. This is incredibly handy should you need feeding after a long stint of watching people in tiaras wave at you from balconies. Or after enjoying Westminster Abbey and so on, especially if you’re staying in one of the numerous fancy and not-so-fancy hotels around the St James’ Park area. Millions do each year, and feeding them is big business, which is why opening a House of Ming in the Taj hotel makes perfect sense. House of Ming markets itself as luxurious, in much the same vein as Hutong at the Shard does, or the boldly bizarre Tattu off Shaftesbury Avenue. House of Ming’s shtick is not earnestly recreated, authentic Cantonese and Sichuan food, but more catch-all Chinese food, in this case by way of India and now transplanted to London. Come and be wowed, it seems to say. Come and experience the fantasy, the decadence, the splendour …
The interior designers Atelier Wren have clearly thought much longer about the place than anyone involved with the menu, creating a space inspired, they say, by the Ming Dynasty, with hand-painted ceilings, lush, velvet booths, red lacquer, green hues, plush golden “love seats” for two, pretty brass pendant lights and elegant group dining rooms. All very well, unless you’re a solo diner, as I was, on an un-busy weekday lunchtime, when they dispatched me to an unlovely corner, where I was seated looking at the toilet door, the Epos till system and the area where they leave the dirty plates. I ordered a bottle of sparkling water – twice. The first one never materialised, and the second they insisted on serving formally, possibly to remind me that I’m in a “posh place”, but then the service dried up, so I just resigned myself to being thirsty and consoled myself with the “Summer Daytime” Spotify playlist made specially for them by Gok Wan. It’s cold in a restaurant’s no man’s land.
