OUR PHILOSOPHY
There’s something indefinable about Yauatcha. It’s part luxury dim sum restaurant, part tea-house and French patisserie. As such it is a grand assembly of the world’s most refined food. It’s perhaps fitting then that this Michelin-starred restaurant is situated on the corner of one of London’s oldest fruit and veg markets, at the very heart of Soho. Because while Yauatcha is so modern in attitude it’s also clear about the debt it owes to some of the oldest culinary traditions.
Yauatcha is a very glamorous place. Downstairs you sit under a starry ceiling at low tables more evocative of the cocktail hour than of fine dining. And the exquisite dishes are brought to your table by relays of smart waiters who could just be film stars.
When Alan Yau created the restaurant he meant it to be a place for talking and recharging of weary spirits. If not modelled exactly on the traditional Cantonese dim sum concept - which is as much about community as eating - it retains vestiges of these roots.
There’s a sense of ebb and a flow about the place, created in part by its ethos of all day dining and partly by its customers – a mix of the Soho creative set who pop in and out and of culinary thrill seekers here because of the food, the food, the food.
It’s a place for talking and eating. Full of noise and colour and if you sit upstairs , the pastry chefs are in full swing in the kitchen behind you creating visual masterpieces for the patisserie counters.
The style of Yauatcha is a kind of democratic luxury driven by a belief that the finest food doesn’t have to be about standing on ceremony. So whether a long Sunday lunch or a quick bite after work, the matter-of-fact delivery here allows the baskets of dim sum and delicate teas to rub shoulders with the fine French patisseries and the end result is a wonderful, rare, but not rarified experience.
Tank magazine 2008 |
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