Li Jin Yuan

After a quick pint in The Palace Bar Lefty and I crossed the bridge and sauntered up O’Connell Street past ‘the spike’, surely one of the world’s most incongruous totems. Lefty has this idea, which I think is only brilliant, of getting it officially re-badged as ‘The Milligan Monument’ in time for the centenary of the Easter Rising. Lefty is on a mission to down shamrockery and paddywhackery and make the flowering of Irish independence more meaningful, not only to the yuppies and rugger-buggers who think Padraic Pearse was a singer in a showband, but to blow-ins like me, the Dutch, Germans, French, Italians, Romanians, Poles, Indians and Chinese into whose territory we were now walking.

I’m a fan of Chinatowns. From San Francisco to Melbourne they add atmospherics, warmth and colour to a city. Manchester, my old home town, responded positively to approaches from the Chinese community as far back as the 1960′s. The result is a vibrant, good fun dining area that spawned Europe’s best Chinese restaurant and, eventually, expanded to embrace Thai, Vietnamese and Korean cooking. The Chinese are a hardworking bunch, thoroughly good citizens, with a massive reverence for the benefits of education. Let’s take them to our hearts here too.

Parnell Street spans almost the whole spectrum of oriental dining. But the rickety old row is hardly heaving. A palatial new restaurant, clearly one ‘with notions’, was empty. There were a few scruffy places, likewise deserted. An old favourite, Ailang – Chinese and Korean – was moderately well supported. And the delightfully named Charming Noodles was at least half full. Clearly Dublin 2s ancient Cantonese citadels – The Good World, The Imperial and the Dame Street bunch will not need to slash prices yet awhile.

At the foot of North Great Georges Street, performing a quick genuflection outside the front door of the architect who designed Manchester’s famed ‘Hacienda’, we bumped into Asheesh Dewan, owner of the wonderful Jaipur and Chakra restaurants. Asheesh gave the nod to the Sichuan House which he said was really excellent but we had already set our hearts on getting into this new place which, early on a Tuesday evening, was already packed with chopstick-clickers. “What’s it called?” Asheesh said. “Err…dunno. It’s just got Chinese characters up over the door and I’m afraid my Mandarin is a tad rusty” I replied.

We were later advised that the pictograms stood for Li Jin Yuan, which mystified me somewhat. Li Jin Yuan has been listed as possibly the sixth richest person in the new China, a biotech, pharmaceutical and property billionaire. Calling a restaurant after him would be rather like calling a new pub the Sean Quinn or the Dermot Desmond. Passing strange, but there you go.

“Why did you bring your binoculars?” demanded Lefty when we were seated.
The leather-clad box did contain goggles of a sort, to wit, two bottles of wine. Just before leaving home I it struck me that some of these places might not be licensed and therefore might permit BYO so I grabbed a Valpolicella and a Chateauneuf du Pape from a box of bottles I’d promised to road test and stuffed them into what I call my port-a-scoop.

The staff were only delightful. A young Chinese guy, the manager, and three lovely girls, all eager to make our evening a success. Chinese tea came complimentary; the plain bolay, not scented jasmine. We ordered a selection of food: spare ribs and cucumber soup; a spicy duck dish; rice and noodles with pork and prawns. At the waitress’s suggestion we took a dish of sweetcorn and pine kernels. Luckily, Lefty is an adventurous eater so I was not deterred from picking out the final dish – whelks in spicy sauce. Whelks are, of course, a portmanteau name for a conglomerate of various kinds of large edible sea snail, often not at all closely related to one another. They are, so to speak, the food of our fathers, ignored and largely unloved by today’s diners; even by those gastrosnobs who salivate over the whelk’s land-locked cultivated cousin.

I have to say we got it spot on with the ordering, with plenty of point and counterpoint in texture and taste. The soup was lean and austere, stimulating the appetite. The duck was not overly spiced and came crusted with crunchy sesame seeds and a slightly toffeed glaze. The moist sweet corn and pine kernels contrasted nicely with the dry fluffy fried rice. But the big deal was the whelks, steamed, singing of the sea and speckled with flakes of fresh chilli which perked up the taste buds a treat. We duelled for them with our chopsticks. Lord knows how many we consumed but, based simply on value for money, the dish saw off the ‘six Burgundian snails for sixteen euro’ I came across recently in a modest pseudo French gaff.

Dessert? You’ve gotta be joking, we were stuffed. Too stuffed to move, which gave me an opportunity to décor gaze – Li Jin Yuan’s ambience was modern, bright and clean, a cut or three above many of its neighbours – and to see what the other diners were consuming. Fave rave seemed to be a big fish, skin done crispy (possibly a black bream?) into which at least three sets of Chinese were tucking in with considerable relish. I made a note for next time.

Did I say value for money? Well, eating out here will certainly not dent the budget. We had change, in the shape of enough money for a taxi back to Sandymount, from three twenty euro notes (They don’t take credit cards as yet). I’ll return and soon – although I must try Asheesh’s recommendation too.

The damage: €51.10 for all the above, ex-tip

Ambience: ***1/2

Service: *****

Quality: ****

Value for Money: *****

Overall: ****1/2

Li Jin Yuan, 143 Parnell Street, Dublin 1 (no phone number as yet).