Riverside Cantonese
Leckwith Rd, Cardiff. 029 2022 7333 / www.riversidecantonese.com
Food **** Atmosphere ***
Housed in a former pub after its move to this location about year or two ago, this very fine Chinese restaurant is a pleasant feature of west Cardiff’s food scene. It may not do anything that’s hugely out of the ordinary for a Chinese restaurant in the UK, but that doesn’t matter too much if the food served is of good quality. The space is a bit large and impersonal, though an openly visible kitchen is always a nice touch – too many kitchens make the food feel like a secret recipe that you can’t be privy to, but a visible kitchen always suggests a certain degree of trust between chef and customer.
Onto the food itself – my partner and I began with mussels with spicy black bean (£8.20). Now, I’m a stone-cold sucker for mussels, and I’m a stone-cold sucker for black bean sauce, making this choice a no-brainer for me. The sauce was delicious, playing superbly with the freshness and saltiness of the mussels. As ever with mussels, part of the pleasure is using the shells to scoop up the remains of the sauce. Excellent stuff.
The mains weren’t quite as perfectly poised for me, but it was nevertheless still excellent. The choices in this case were king prawns with pak choi (£9.95) and spicy vegetarian Singapore rice vermicelli noodles (£6.50), with side helpings of rice. The prawns were juicy and succulent and although the sauce surrounding them was a bit bland, the pak-choi was crunchy and tangy. I’m so-so on vermicelli (I prefer my noodles with a bit more of a concrete texture), but these were excellent, a nice mixture of fluff and sauce, not going too far in any one direction.
As you’ve probably noticed, the prices at the Riverside Cantonese are fully reasonable, but they don’t skimp on quality. Only a handful of dishes break the £10 barrier – though Chinese food is at its best when enjoyed communally, which I suspect is a reason to keep the portions fair as well. Good stuff.
words Fedor Tot