Consuming Interest

• • S

By LESLIE ADRIAN IAm interested to see the increasing popularity of Chinese food in London; new Chinese res- taurants are springing up almost as frequently as espresso coffee bars. And as some of you—par- ticularly those of the generations which grew up at a time when a Chinese restaurant was some- thing exotic, if not actually vicious—may be diffident about them, I want to say a little about them here.

Two years ago there were just over a dozen in central London; and these were nearly all in Soho. They used to rely to a great extent for their trade on the motor-coach firms who ran conducted tours of `London's Night Life'—tours setting out purposefully, cold sober, from the neighbourhood of. Russell Square in order to see the exotic, seamy side of the city. The tours have now largely been abandoned—Soho, apparently, was not abandoned enough—but the Chinese restaurants continue to flourish. In fact there are now over thirty; and they have spread from Soho to residential areas like Hampstead, South Kensington and Regent's Park as well. Another is due to open in that new gourmets' corner, World's End, Chelsea, very soon.

There are, I think, two reasons why Chinese food has become so popular. The first is that growing numbers of dieters have discovered it is low in calories with its predominance of non- fattening vegetables. The second, and probably most significant, reason is that a new type of Chinese restaurateur has emerged since the war.

These are the Chinese nationals who found themselves exiles in London when the Iron Curtain fell over their homeland. Mr. C. P. Zee, for example, who runs the Asiatic Restaurant in Irving Street and the Rice Bowl in South Ken- sington, was formerly attached to the Embassy staff in London. Two of his colleagues in similar Ventures were Chiang Kai-shek diplomats.

`One might say that we started up in the restaurant business because we wanted to eat! But we also wanted to be able to enjoy good Chinese food,' Mr. Zee explains. With some pride he recalls that in those early days his clientele was 80 per cent. Chinese, which means that he was providing good cooking. Today the whole enter- prise has expanded, and his fellow-countrymen account for only about 30 per cent. of his trade.

If there were more Chinese cooks available, there would be even more restaurants, Mr. Zee believes. The demand for Chinese food is there, but training cooks is a hazardous undertaking. Mr. Zee has tried to train Europeans and has failed, for this is no haute cuisine with a defined hierarchy : it is a lay-brotherhood which the European does not understand. The head cook is quite prepared to clean the vegetables, wash up and water the bean shoots, which traditionally grow under wet sacking in the Chinese kitchen.

The uninitiated European customer invariably assumes the bean shoots are bamboo shoots, Mr. Zee tells me. The tender, succulent green bean shoots are a basis for many vegetable dishes. Bamboo shoots, which are used less frequently, look and taste rather like young Swede turnips.

I asked Mr. Zee for some guidance in ordering a meal, as a change from the inevitable noodles, rice and sweet and sour pork—ordered, he says, by 99 per cent. of his European customers.

The first principle is that almost anything goes with anything else. In China, anything under eight to ten small dishes is considered frugal fare. You can eat lobster with duck : pork with shrimps. The European habit of ordering separate portions for each person also amuses the Chinese. A meal, they believe, should be a shared experience among friends.

Chinese soups are almost all light consommes with a chicken base and are drunk at any stage in the meal when a rest from richness is needed. Lager beer goes well with most dishes, or a fairly dry hock. The ideal apdritif is a dry sherry, and you find some Chinese stick to a Tio Pepe right through the meal.

I am grateful to Mr. Zee for an introduction to a new delicacy, the Pacific prawn. More tender, yet three times the size of scampi, this is obviously destined to go much farther than the Chinese cuisine. They are already so much in demand that there are plans to import them frozen in bulk. Mr. Zee gave me this suggested menu : wun tung soup, soochow duck, sweet-sour pork, chao shao bean shoots, Pacific prawns, egg-fried rice, shrimp crackers and lychees.

I am sorry to have to report that the Shops Bill, which Mr. Angus Maude eviscerates on another page, has been taken a further step towards the Statute Book. On Tuesday it was debated again in the House of Lords. Perhaps the Government will take note of the fact that the only support it found there came from the Labour benches.

It seems to me, as I said a couple of weeks ago, that there is a vital principle at stake here for consumers. You would never have known it, listening to the Government arguments for the measure.

To begin with, the Government's line is that shops must be compelled to close at six in order to prevent shop assistants from being overworked. Now, in almost every industry, workers' hours are restricted; but this does not mean that all factories must open and close at the same time every day. It is perfectly simple to enact a forty- hour or forty-four-hour week, and to insist that any employee doing more than that should get overtime. Why can't the same rule be applied to shops? For, logically, if the Government makes all shops close at six, it should make all news- papers stop printing at six, too.

But the really ridiculous Government argument is the one I criticised a fortnight ago : that the small shopkeepers support the Bill. The only evidence for this put forward in the Lords is that `it is the view of the National Chamber of Trade.' The National Chamber of Trade, in case you do not know it, is the uppity name of the 'ring' of middle-size shopkeepers. Their worst enemy is the small man. They know his staying open later at night suits the convenience of the consumer : and they are the moving spirit of this Bill, whose design is to squeeze the small man out.

The trouble is, MPs do not work normal office hours. They can do their shopping (if they have to) in the morning. But I hope that some of the women MPs will take up arms against the Bill when it comes down to the Commons.