Saturday 13 January 2018

Yang's, Cardiff Chinese restaurant review


Alongside Riverside Cantonese and Happy Gathering, Yang's forms Cardiff’s trinity of prominent old skool Chinese restaurants.

Having originally opened in Barry in 1998, the family-run restaurant relocated to Cardiff’s Penarth Road in 2005.

Whilst the menu includes familiar Cantonese, Peking, Szechuan and Hong Kong style dishes there’s a smattering of more unusual offerings including spicy soft shell crab and West Lake beef soup.


As a group of 15 nursing New Year’s Eve hangovers, we kept it simple and ordered the very good value and generously portioned special party menu (£20 per person, minimum 8 persons).

A laundry basket of prawn crackers were warm and grease free.


Mixed starters included all the classics - good vegetable spring rolls, prawn toast and crispy seaweed. The standouts were uber-crisp yet tender sticky King Do ribs and chicken satay drenched in a deep-flavoured peanut sauce. 


A generous quantity of aromatic crispy duck and cumin-spiced Mongolian lamb were both crisp of skin and tender of flesh. 

Mongolian lamb

They were served with a soft pancakes (that were replenished on demand), sweet and tangy hoisin sauce, cucumber and spring onion. 

Crispy duck

Like all the best Chinese restaurants the sauces on the main dishes were light instead of gloopy and there was no onslaught of MSG.

The standout was tender beef and green peppers in black bean sauce with an unexpected thwack of chilli. 


Crispy beef in peking sauce delivered on its billing. Too often this dish is disappointingly limp. 


Yeung Chow fried rice was flecked with a cornucopia of delights including shrimp, roast pork, omelette and peas.


Chicken with cashew nuts was enjoyably bland, the crisp nuts and al dente vegetables all left to do their thing. It was served in a crisp noodle birds nest that was more style over substance. 


Cantonese sweet and sour chicken had a pleasing tang and crunchy vegetables but the batter could have been crisper. 


We finished the meal with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

We really enjoyed our meal at Yang's. The service was also great and the prices good to boot. In fact, I preferred it to my most recent meals at the erratic Riverside Cantonese and ever reliable Happy Gathering.

The Details:

Address - Yang's, 189-189A Penarth Rd, Cardiff CF11 6FR
Telephone - 029 2066 6188

Yang's Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

4 comments:

  1. We've eaten here at least once a year, some years more often. The personal welcome from the proprietor is always warm and helpful. I have several strong food intolerances and she personally took great care to ensure that enough dishes were adapted to suit me and that I got them safely! The food is consistently enjoyable and good value. I'm puzzled the place doesn't yet have people queuing around the block because if you've not yet been to Yang's, you're truly missing out!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @drudwy - Great to hear they cater to your food intolerances. Going the extra mile like that makes the difference.

      Delete
  2. Same as other post being using this place 4/5 times year for about 5 years. Decoration service and food well above any other Chinese in Cardiff
    Also sometimes still does vegetables carving which look great
    Used to be husband Chef and head waitress wife family run resturants better

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @Cardiff local - Good to know they've been consistently good on each of your visits. It's still family run I believe - the manager's kids were there on our visit.

      Delete