Birthday Food Bonanza at Lahloo Pantry and Wong's

After a 4 day weekend I am back. Had a lovely birthday full of many celebrations, afternoon tea at Lahloo's Pantry with Rich my mum and sister, then dinner at Wongs with Rich and our friend Phil. Monday we went to The Eldon House for the pub quiz and our team won which was very satisfying, however I think the set up with the prizes is a bit stingy.

I had been hunting for a suitable afternoon tea venue in Bristol for a while, being a big tea fan, then after visiting Lahloo for Valentine's Day, the search was over. For £13.50 you get as much tea as you want to sample and two stands of open sandwiches, mini savoury muffins, meringues with sweet pistachio filling, scones and pomegranate and champagne Turkish delight, amongst other things. It was all delicious, my particular favourites were the quails egg and rocket open sandwiches with smoked tea salt but the scones were some of the best I've tasted in a long while.

Tea wise I sampled Smoky and the classic Earl Grey. The Smoky tea was really good it was very strongly smoke flavoured but it went with the egg sandwiches perfectly. Mum opted for afternoon Darjeeling and although she is very particular about the brewing of her tea was extremely complimentary. Lahloo changes it's afternoon tea menu every month, I am almost tempted to book in every month if it continues to be as good as this one was, I cannot wait to see what they come up with next!

 It took me a while to pick a restaurant for my birthday meal. A lot of independent restaurants are not open on Sunday nights which I can see makes sense, but for this occasion it made things a little tricky. I love Asian food particularly so after recommendations from two Malaysian friends I decided to go for Wong's is on Denmark Street, just behind the Hippodrome and I have been curious about it ever since it opened so was looking forward to going.

When we got inside I was surprised by how beautifully decorated it was, all dark woods and gold plus the chairs were like thrones they were enormous. The restaurant was pretty quiet apart from a birthday party near the back. The wine is reasonably priced, many bottles just over the £14 mark and as usual we were all slightly overwhelmed by choice but this is not always a bad thing.

We all had starters Rich went for the lettuce parcels, I went for pork gyoza dumplings and Phil went for the classic spring rolls. The staff were very friendly and attentive and the food arrived promptly, it was well presented and tasted amazing. No greasy overly salty flavours that you can get in some lesser Chinese  takeaways.

For our mains we ordered four dishes to share and some rice. Rich and I chose the honey barbecued pork tenderloin, crispy shredded chilli beef and beef ho-fun noodles, whilst Phil went for the spicy chilli chicken dish. When it arrived it was well presented and the portions were very generous, again I cannot fault the food it was well seasoned, tasty and definitely the best Chinese I have had probably ever. The pork tenderloin was probably my favourite closely followed by the ho-fun noodles, they were so moreish.

Honey Barbecue Pork Tenderloin

Crispy Shredded Chilli Beef

Half way through the Beef Ho-Fun

Spicy Chilli Chicken

I cannot fault the food and friendly service at Wong's however I do have two small complaints. The first is the music, we had Nickelback and Westlife throughout the meal which although I can filter out the latter the former I cannot ignore. It seemed a bit sad to have such a good meal accompanied by intrusive music, why not go for something instrumental? The second gripe is that one of the staff, I assume was one of the co-owners, who was very nice, asked if we wanted tea or coffee, to which we replied no, but then she insisted she would bring us some Chinese green tea on the house, how could we refuse?

The tea was very nice indeed but when the bill finally arrived we noted we had been charged for the tea, we waited a while to ask about this but everyone seemed to have disappeared so we paid and left. As I said these are fairly small things and I would encourage everyone who enjoys good Chinese food to try out Wongs as it is very reasonably priced and the quality is superb. I am really looking forward to going again and trying something new.