Mrs G and I are both big fans of an early meal.
Firstly, it usually means you get the best food and service before the kitchen and front of house teams are slammed at peak hours.
Secondly, if you're out for dinner then you can get home at a reasonable hour and have time to digest before bedtime. Rock and roll hey.
I'm a big fan of an early lunch too. In fact, I’m that weirdo in the office who cracks open their packed lunch the minute the clock strikes midday.
However, the other day, we took our preference for an early lunch to even greater lengths when we visited Zi’s Café in Cathays to try out their new dim sum menu. Supposedly open for lunch at 12pm, we found an open sign on their door at 11.57am and gladly got stuck in. It was lucky we did, because as soon as midday arrived, two other large groups and a table of two arrived for lunch too.
Having brought in a specialist dim sum chef and only started serving their new menu in the past couple of weeks, news has clearly spread quickly.
I can understand why as we’re already huge fans of Zi’s main evening menu, which features belting dishes such as lamb with cumin, chicken with dried chilli and spring onion, and salt and pepper aubergine.
Zi’s dim sum menu offers a tick sheet divided into sections such as steamed, pan fried, deep fried and, porridge, noodles and rice. As per usual, I got a bit carried away ticking too many boxes.
Deep fried prawn dumplings (£4.80) were gloriously crisp and grease free, and absolutely rammed with plump and sweet king prawns. Dredged through a bowl of creamy and tangy mayonnaise, it was a corker of a dim sum.
Steamed house special prawn dumplings (£5) were superb too. The thin glutinous cases were packed with sweet crustaceans.
Cubes of crisp-edged soft-textured turnip cake (£5.50) were compellingly seasoned with the deep umami hit of XO sauce. Even more addictive were the crispy scraps littered around the plate, which were like fish and chip shop batter bits on steroids.
Fried Peking pork dumplings (£4.20) saw delicate cased wrappers filled with juicy minced meat seasoned with chive. They were delicious dipped in ginger scented vinegar.
Salt and pepper squid (£5.50) was nice and tender but lacked the uber-crisp batter coating which I usually expect from Zi’s crispy squid. Still, shreds of spring onion flecked with a mammoth hit of garlic were a lovely balance to the fried stuff.
Cloud-like honey barbecue roast pork buns (£4.50) were an excellent example of their type. Light and squidgy, they were filled with tender barbecue pork in a sweet and savoury sauce, which avoided being too sickly.
Singapore noodles were arguably the weakest link of the lunch. Whilst the noodles had a really good bite and the veggies were nice and crisp, we both found the amount of curry powder and level of seasoning a bit too high.
It’s great to have somewhere serving delicious dim sum on our side of Cardiff and I’m glad to see that it’s somewhere with the pedigree of Zi’s Café which has taken up the mantle. We’ll definitely be back to work our way through the rest of that tick sheet.
The Details:
Address - Zi's Cafe, 94-96 Woodville Road, Cathays, Cardiff CF24 4ED
Telephone - 02920 216 294
No comments:
Post a Comment