Cha Cha Moon

Well, last night I finally got to try out Alan Yau's new restaurant, Cha Cha Moon. After turning up two Sundays in a row before realising it is SHUT on that day of the week (doh!) I arranged to have dinner there with a friend. The layout is very similar to Wagamama's, with long wooden benches, but there is much more ambience with the walk to the dining area lit by fuschia pink glass walls displaying the kitchen and staff. The back of the restaurant opens up out onto Kingly Court with tables with umbrellas for al fresco dining.

At the moment, everything on the menu is priced at £3.50. Whether this is a opening promotional thing or permanent prices, I don't know (edit - I have since read that he will be keeping these prices for a year), but it means that the meal was extremely affordable. The restaurant is supposed to be based on the Hong Kong noodle bars, and serves Hong Kong style milk tea as well as some other really cool drinks like Malt Vitasoy (one of my favourite flavoured carton soya drinks) and some interesting mixes of freshly squeezed juices and cocktails. The juice I went for was a mixture of orange, carrot, rose water and something else that escapes me, but was delicious.

The food however, was not as amazing as I was expecting. Perhaps my expectations were too high due to the fact that I've dined at Michelin starred Yauatcha, and know the reputation of Alan Yau's other Michelin starred restaurant Hakkasan, but the meal was far from good. We ordered duck soup noodles (which I was informed by my friend was just ok, the soup was a weird white opaque colour but the duck was good), Singapore char kway teow (which came about 20 minutes after my friends main), choi sum (sort of leafy Chinese broccoli greens), prawn and sweetcorn wor tip and spring rolls. My Singapore char kway teow, which is supposed to be the meal he's losing the most money on as he flies the ho fun noodles over from HK, was average at best... the noodles were greasy and stodgy and covered with a very dark sauce which masked the flavour of the fish cake and lap cheung (described in the menu as Chinese salami!) with only a hint of chilli. I didn't even KNOW there was supposed to be clams in it and definitely didn't find any! The wor tip was average but in my personal opinion the outside needed further cooking as they were a very pale colour and the choi sum was stringy.

To be honest for £3.50 a dish, you can't complain. You could easily eat there for under £5. If you want a really cheap dinner that's no better than China Town but with a lot more style, then this is definitely a place to try. And to be fair, I've heard brilliant things about the other dishes on the menu, so I may just have to go back and try some more dishes before I make a proper decision on how good Cha Cha Moon is. (oh, and guess what the photo of the day was for my Project 365? You guessed it, Cha Cha Moon's sign... excellent!)

You can read some more reviews on Cha Cha Moon below:

Times Online
Time Out
The Independant