Panda’s Kitchen, 152 Station Road, Harrow HA1 2RH (pandas.kitchen). Starters £6.50-£12.80; large dishes £10.80-£26.80; desserts £5.50-£6.50; wine from £19; Tsingtao beer £4.50
We all find comfort in different places. A few months ago I received an email from a reader who had been tending to his ailing dad at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, where I grew up. One evening, having spent the day bedside, he needed dinner, and found his way to Panda’s Kitchen, a Sichuan restaurant down on that stretch of Harrow’s Station Road that has long been a little Chinatown, in among the Gujarati cafés and Middle Eastern grill houses. He clearly found something diverting amid the tension and emotional chaos of parenting his parent.
I related to this. My parents’ home was not far from Northwick Park Hospital. Both of them spent time there and one of them made a good stab at dying there. (My mother was even a non-executive director of the hospital whose intensive care unit she occupied for a while.) Anybody who has reached that age where looking after their parents, even just temporarily, is a part of life’s narrative, will know the irregular rhythm of it. We hope for something smooth. We hope for something sweet and painless; we don’t always get it. Tossed about on the roaring oceans of stomach-churning drama we swim desperately in search of still waters. Meal times become more than just fuel. If you don’t feed yourself, you’re no good to anyone else so they have a certain utility and imperative. But they are also a reminder of normality, of a time before the call came summoning you to the bedside. And all of that really is comforting.
‘A light, chilli-boosted broth’: Sichuan Mao roast duck’ Photograph: Sophia Evans/The ObserverIn theory, the kind of food offered by Panda’s Kitchen should not be considered comforting. We are old hands at the Sichuan repertoire now, aren’t we? We know about the explosions of chillies and the deep, salty, fiery broths; the oil baths the colour of a sunset’s ends and the peppercorns that make your lips and tongue tingle, like your name has been spoken in a whisper in a next-door room. If anything, it should be considered discomfort food. But a bowl of something which is so powerful and so intricately layered that it demands your full attention can sometimes be exactly the comfort we need.
‘Dramatic and refreshing’: black cloud ear fungus salad. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The ObserverIt helps that, while the restaurant is a featureless oblong room, Panda’s Kitchen is also a deep imperial red, with red banquettes and hanging basket lanterns. That gives it a womb-like feel. Do not, however, come for a fancy time. Panda’s Kitchen does not do fancy. The tables are wipe-down. The laminated menus are wipe-down. If you ask for the aloe vera or the sour plum juice from the soft drinks list, they’ll plonk down a plastic bottle. You get to crack the seal yourself. Ask, and they’ll bring you a glass with ice.
‘A golden overcoat of echoing crunch’: pork strips. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The ObserverAll the familiar Sichuan dishes are here. I have to order the black cloud ear fungus salad. The soft, slippery, frilly lobes of mushroom somehow manage to be both lightly gelatinous and crunchy at the same time. The soy vinegar dressing is invigorating. There is the unrestrained hit of red chilli and the breezy aromatics of coriander. It is both dramatic and refreshing; a reminder that all the flavours are about to be turned up a notch. Another Sichuan classic, gong bao prawns, is equally on point. The seafood is fresh and squeaky; the acidity of the gently thickened sauce, a foil to its sweetness. And when all the prawns have gone there is the meditative process of picking with your chopsticks between the fine dice of celery for the victory of now-slippery peanuts.
‘The lightest of batters’: fish fillets. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The ObserverDry-fried green beans with minced pork and chilli bring crunch to the table. The menu also includes double-cooked pork, Chongqing chicken and the offer of a hotpot, which is less dinner than a challenge to be completed. Avoid sticking a chilli-dipped finger in your eye, as I once did. These are the familiar orders, but there are other things. Among the starters are Sichuan crispy pork strips, a collection of delightful words that belong together. The meat has been marinated, then battered in a golden overcoat of echoing crunch. With it is a seasoning dust of chilli, ground Sichuan peppercorns and, I suspect, MSG fairy-flavour dust. Lift a crisp pebble. Dip it in the seasoning. Repeat. Sea bass and catfish are offered many ways, both whole and in fillets: “red braised” or “dry slow cooked”; with pickled cabbage and chilli or ginger and spring onion. We have fillets first deep fried in the lightest of batters, then turned in a sauce of Sichuan chilli bean paste until almost dry, so that the sauce seems to be inside the batter.
‘On point’: gong bao prawns. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The ObserverThere are also the dishes on the small “seasonal” menu, although it’s not clear which season they have in mind for these are wintery stews and today it is hot and steamy. Then again Chengdu, the Sichuan capital, often is too. A ceramic bowl arrives filled with hunks of red-braised lamb, with equally meaty, curling and crinkled sheets of bean curd and slow-cooked potato. It all bobs in a thick sauce full of soy, chilli heat and sweetness from the lamb. The crumbling potato acts as thickener. You can eat it with rice, but it feels like a complete dish. While it is very much Sichuan, it also shakes hands with things like scouse from Liverpool or Monmouth stew from Wales, those dishes that make a little prized and expensive meat go so much further through the alchemy of seasoning and time.
‘Very much Sichuan’: red braised lamb with bean curd. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The ObserverThe Sichuan Mao roast duck is a quiet showstopper. Bone-in pieces of something similar to Cantonese roast duck bob in a light, chilli-boosted broth full of bean sprouts, handfuls of coriander, dried chillies and so very much more. The once crisped, lacquered skin is now soft and salty. The meat pulls from the bones, which pile up. It’s a soup fighting for main course status, and very much winning. There is a dessert menu, but I suspect the Irish cream cheesecake hasn’t been made on site. As ever with places like this, I leave feeling I haven’t done the menu justice; that the three of us today have only just scratched its imperial red surface. Incidentally, my correspondent’s dad is home now and doing well. His son will have to find another excuse for a fix of thrill-seeker’s comfort food.
News bitesWhile the headline rate of inflation has been steadily dropping from 6.7% a year ago to 2.2% now, menu price inflation remains much higher, according to the latest quarterly update from hospitality sector marketing company Lumina Intelligence. Pub and bar menu prices are up 5.5% compared to the second quarter of 2023, and food menu prices across the entire hospitality sector are up 4.5%. The lowest inflation is in the coffee and sandwich shop market.
The Japanese influenced Kushi-Ya in Nottingham, my restaurant of the year for 2022, has announced it is moving. On 5 September, it will open at a new site on Low Pavement in the city, with double the number of covers and a private dining room. As co-head chef Simon Carlin puts it, ‘Same vibe, just more space.’ (kushi-ya.co.uk)
And sad news of a significant loss: after 17 years, chef Tom Pemberton has announced the closure of west London’s highly regarded Hereford Road. The restaurant was heavily influenced by Pemberton’s time as head chef at Fergus Henderson’s St John Bread and Wine in Spitalfields, and was a regular fixture in Restaurant magazine’s list of top 100 restaurants in the UK.
Jay Rayner’s cookbook, Nights Out at Home: Recipes and Stories from 25 Years as a Restaurant Critic (Penguin, £22), is available from guardianbookshop.com at £19.80
Email Jay at [email protected] or follow him on X @jayrayner1