Met Su Yan Delicious Kosher Chinese Restaurant

Met Su Yan
The name is Hebrew for delicious and the word has been split into three syllables to sound Chinese.

We ordered:
Duck pancake starter to share. You roll up the wafer thin neatly round pancakes stacked in steamer. Each person takes one and spreads the dark sauce to bind the filling to the cover, then adds the meat (shredded duck) and strips of onion and green something and wraps up the pancake into a roll. You eat the pancake with your fingers. If you are fussy about not eating with unwashed hands and you have just slammed a car door around
Fish ('bass').  One cynical diner later said, what gets called bass or any other name nowadays by the people selling fish - (at any stage wholesaler or retailer) can be anything.
What ever the fish was, it was very succulent. Everybody said it was good.

Lemon chicken. Not over lemony. If you don't like lemon, don't worry, it is good. If you love lemon, not quite enough.

Chocolate fondant (soft oozy centre).
or/and
Fried banana pieces in sesame seed.
I Changed the vanilla ice on the menu with the fondant to an accompanying raspberry ice.

Service
Service is included. We checked the bill after paying.

They will wrap up leftovers if you ask. When we lived in America it was standard practise for restaurants to offer to pack up leftovers. That saves them clearing up at the end of the day and reduces their disposal charges, as well as giving the customer a second snack meal at home for the price of one full meal with service and washing up done for you.

Glatt?
Their business card says Glatt kosher under the supervision of the Federation of Synagogues.

Kosher?
This means you can be sure of not getting pork. It also means no shellfish. This is useful for me, because I am allergic to shellfish.

Glatt kosher
What does Glatt kosher mean? Does it mean that they check the lungs of the animal, not just the particular cut of meat?

Or that different rabbis have their own systems of checking with some fussier than others? In the USA sometimes you have named rabbis checking. The ultra-orthodox will only eat at places checked by their own known or favourite fussy rabbi. (A bit like some places picking accepting a candidate with a degree, but fussier universities favouring different feeder schools, or employers preferring a candidate from a particular university

If you care, you probably know. If you don't know, you probably don't care. Either look it up in advance, or ask the staff when they are not busy.

Price
The set meal was about thirty seven pounds a person. The 'guests', one of whom frequently eats at such (kosher) restaurants, were willing to share a main course. In the end we shared the starter and dessert but ordered a main course for each person.

One person who paid said that for such a sum we could have eaten in a top Michelin starred restaurant in central London. What does a Michelin restaurant provide? Fancy plates and flowers. Hot and cold running staff asking if everything is all right. Surprises - freebies. Sometimes a parting gift such as a flower or a chocolate with the bill or even a wrapped mini cake to take home.

What do you get here? Glatt kosher. That in itself is a surprise for some.

Special Occasions!
At that price I don't think you, or most people, would eat there every day. Once a week. Or? Special occasions, One table was unofficially celebrating an engagement and the youngsters had chosen the venue.

A second similar restaurant is in the Golders Green area. We could all remember eating at Kaifeng Chinese kosher restaurant, which opened many years ago to great acclaim and was then a great novelty for being both kosher and Chinese, both of which were a novelty for some diners, and the combination being a novelty for others.

One of our diners said that Met Su Yan, Edgware branch, was better than other Chinese kosher places, which might have been great when they opened but no longer had the wow factor.
I have tried to give you not just my opinion but the varied views of four or more people.

Another was visibly celebrating a birthday.

Toilets
Cubicles marked men and women. No difference. Ladies, if the ladies is occupied, you could use the other.

Getting There

PARKING
Yellow lines right outside, but possible parking space further away from shops, so you might be able to drop off anybody in high heels or children or the elderly. Check signs to see whether and where you can park, depending on day and time.

Walk downhill from Edgware station. Towards end, before library, take left hand fork, at Y road junction. It is at the far end of shops on your right.
1-2 The Promenade
Edgwarebury Lane
Edgware
HA8 7JZ
tel 020 8958 6840

Website
www.metsuyan.co.uk

(Pictures will be added later today or tomorrow. Please come back and read again.)

Several more kosher or Israeli or Jewish style restaurants in Edgware, Hatch End and Golders Green and Finchley. Cheaper alternative B & K Edgware or Hatch End, Jewish style, not kosher supervised.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Fulham wine rooms for meals, wine tasting, parties and groups

Fulham wine rooms, a restaurant with (Enotec) machines dispensing wines by the glass for tasting. You can go there just to taste wines, or wine taste first then have a meal with a vast selection of wines from which you can choose. The restaurant has two large rooms, with open tables for those who like to see and be seen, or alcove pew seating for those who like to be secluded with their own group.

A separate room is available for parties such as Christmas parties, or regular meetings such as a monthly wine society meeting, with a dinner. You can even bring your own wines for a wine tasting. Just book the room for a certain number of diners and pay the deposit.

Food Choices

I had the Christmas menu. I chose pumpkin soup, turkey main course, apple crumble dessert. 

The pumpkin soup was okay, and came with dry crisp bread.

 I preferred the bread which we ordered as an extra. I am not into toast and dried out food. I like moist food.

My turkey main course meat was wrapped in bacon. Tasty. Filling. Not much in the way of vegetables.

Others who had the calamari (seafood) seemed very happy with their choice.

Desserts

The desserts  were a mixed bunch, creme brûlée, xmas pudding, apple crumble and my favourite, chocolate fondant. I had had so much xmas pudding, which was abundantly available in shops to heat up in a microwave in a minute. So I opted for the apple crumble. This was a mistake. The apple was pureed and delicious. But the crumble was not melt in the mouth, but rock hard, looking like roasted almonds. When you bashed it with a fork, you could not flatten it. I thought, I can't suck it. I didn't want to risk breaking my teeth, nor scraping my insides. They were very nice and immediately changed it.  I opted for the chocolate fondant (french for melting) which was a dome of chocolate cake with a melting centre. It was served with ice cream. 

The extras we ordered were bread (brown bread which came with oil) and I had decaffeinated coffee after the meal. 

The decorations for Christmas were very jolly.

Price

The price worked out at twenty pounds something per person for a two or three course meal. For a group Christmas party, a three course meal, with service, coffee, and several white and red wines the event organiser had brought, came to about £40 per person.

Getting there

It's a bit of a walk from Parson's Green station on the circle/District line, so allow another ten minutes if you are meeting people for a timed event. But if you've checked out the postcode on your phone satnav, quite easy. We come out of the left exit from the station, up a short flight of steps into a wide alley, turn left and walk along the alley, down Lettuce Road past the houses out into the main road to the shops and you are already almost there.

Tables are outside for smokers and fresh air fiends.

Fulham Wine Rooms

871 Fulham Road, London SW6 5HP

Tel:0207 042 9440

wine rooms.london/fulham

This was my second or third visit and other members of my family have been here more often. I looked at their website and they have two other branches. Here's the Kensington one:

127-129 Kensington Church Street, London W8 7LP. Tel: +44 207 727 8142.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker.

Trick or Treat? What's Hot In The Ice Cream Shop?

Baskin Robbins have ice cream of the month for £1.50 in a cone. 

Trick or treat, they joke.

But for those of us who think it's too chilly for ice cream and want to warm up, there are six hot treats.

The two cheapest treats are £3.95, for hot waffle with a scoop of ice cream. Or chocolate brownie with a scoop of ice cream. If you are willing to treat yourself to a dessert costing £4.95, you can have Chocolate Fondant, American Style Pancake, Sticky Toffee Pudding, or Rocky Road Brownie. 

These are all from Baskin Robbins in Hatch End. You might find other flavours at other branches and in other months.