House of Ming

This restaurant is operated by the Taj Group, and is part of the St James Court hotel, but it has its own entrance on Buckingham Gate. It seats up to 58 people, and has well-spaced tables and smart decor. 

The wine list had labels such as Chateau Changyu Moser XV Helan Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon Blanc de Noir 2020 at £42 for a wine that retails at £27, Harsanyi Hizelgo Late Harvest Tokaj 2018 at £48 for a wine that you can find in the high street for £12, and Estate Riesling from Dreissigacker in the Rheinhessen of unknown vintage at £79 compared to its shop price of £21. There were a few posher options like Meursault 'Criots', Domaine Ballot-Millot of mysterious vintage at £180 for a wine that might cost £70 depending on the vintage. Tsing Tao beer was £7 for a small 330ml bottle. 

At this meal we tried both the vegetarian (£28) and regular (£30) dim sum selections, each with a pair of three different dumplings. The vegetarian selection had a mushroom dumpling, which was a little soggy in texture, a better spinach and almond dumpling and an edamame dumpling. The dumpling cases were quite thin and translucent, as they should be. The non-vegetarian selection had a good spicy chicken dumpling, the classic har gau prawn dumpling and a scallop dumpling. The scallop was the pick of them, with good natural sweetness and careful cooking. The mushroom was the least good, averaging 14/20 across the selections.

Steamed sea bass (£28) was quite well cooked, with a garnish of julienned carrots, a sauce of the cooking juices with a little soy that did not have much flavour (13/20). Sichuan wok fried chilli chicken (£30) was pleasant, the chicken not having much inherent flavour but enlivened a little by the chilli, which was quite restrained (13/20). Water chestnut and lotus root with celery (£28) was pleasant but had oddly large pieces of lotus root, making it hard to eat from a practical viewpoint. Usually, Chinese food involves bite sized pieces that can easily be picked up with chopsticks (13/20). Hakka noodles (£30) had good texture and were cooked with assorted shredded vegetables and a little ginger (14/20). Egg fried rice was fine.

A dessert of yuzu (£12) with a shell of cocoa butter shaped as a lemon, containing lime and yuzu mousse and lemon compote came with chocolate to the side. This was quite clever technically but did not taste quite as good as I recall at my previous meal here. The texture was fine but there was not quite enough citrus to cut through the richness (14/20).

A chocolate dessert called ‘Melting pot” (£14) involved hot chocolate poured at the table that melted a chocolate layer beneath, allowing the warm chocolate to combine with a further layer of passion fruit cremeux below. This was rich but enjoyable, the main issue being that the passion fruit element was so subtle as to be almost undetectable (14/20). 

Service was good, the staff being friendly and dishes arriving at a good pace. The bill came to £148 per person with just beer and jasmine tea to drink. Objectively this is quite a lot of money. House of Ming is aiming for the same territory as Gouqi, Hakkasan and Imperial Treasure and is priced at that point, but the food is not quite at the same level as these competitors. Still, it was very busy on this weekday evening.

Further reviews: 19th Sep 2023