From Surbiton to Hammersmith

Saturday, October 11th , 2025

Master Wei is a casual style noodle restaurant in Hammersmith (a sibling is in Holborn). It is very successful, its chef having been featured in the Netflix show Chef’s Table. However, this is not just some TV chef phoning it in; the best dishes here were very good indeed. Not everything was quite to the standard of the best noodle dishes, but this was generally high quality and good value.

At Koyal I pre-ordered the Arnaud Tauzin chicken, arguably the best chicken in the world. If you do this then you need to give several days’ notice, and the chef will only make it on weekdays, when it is quieter. We did a direct comparison of the regular chicken tikka with the Tauzin one, the latter made with both breast meat and thigh meat. These were all good, but unsurprisingly, the Tauzin chicken was a lot better, and the thigh meat tikka in particular was dazzling in its flavour. Also lovely was a wild boar curry, rather like a pork vindaloo, but even better. The usual dishes here were still lovely as well, such as the bhajias, the mustard potatoes and the spinach side dish. This is a terrific restaurant.