Friday 29th July 2011

Wuli Wuli, Camberwell

I've been threatening to start writing this blog for quite some time now, so tonight I finally remembered to bring my camera with me for a night on the town in south London where me and the boy decided to try out the food and ambiance in 'Wuli Wuli' in Camberwell.  This restaurant was pointed out to me (whilst waiting on the 436) by the boy as somewhere he'd like to try.  As a rule, I'm not particularly fond of Chinese food but Wuli Wuli has a whole section of the menu dedicated to Sichuan food which is supposedly very good (as opposed to the standard Chinese restaurant fare on offer in the rest of the menu), so after grabbing a take-away menu and perusing it at home for a while we decided to try it out this evening.  

Chinese food, is the culinary genre which leaves me the most cold, my experience with it could however be said to be rather limited and not truly authentic.  Noodles or chips (or both in the same tray) in curry sauce were often what I ordered from the local Chinese take away in the early 90's, generally after a night out as a student. Other than this I've always thought it to be rather gloppy and msg-y. Over the years people have tried to persuade me to the delights of such and I did have one reasonably nice meal in a small Chinese restaurant, downstairs in one of the many Chinese restaurants somewhere on Parnell street in Dublin about 7 or 8 years ago during my stint working as an ESOL teacher.  This was at the midst of all the Celtic tiger nonsense and Parnell street was fast becoming a cultural melting pot.  The interesting thing about that meal was how there were completely different menus on offer to the group of Chinese students who were taking me out, rather than the standard grub for the uninitiated Irish punter, so what I ate that night was quite nice, it was, for instance the first time I ate sheet tofu; cut into tagliatelle-like strips and swimming in a sticky sweet and sour sauce.  

Anyway, I digress, back to 'Wuli Wuli'.  When we arrived the place was empty apart from ourselves and two extremely friendly and helpful waiting staff.  The menu is divided into 2 sections as I've mentioned, the standard Chinese food and the Sichuan section. For a starter I ordered the Smashed Cucumbers in Hot Garlic sauce.  This a cold dish so the 'hot' in the sauce refers to the chili heat.  It was the boy who got me interested in trying these.  He's a great one for reading reviews and the like so he had already read about these and ensured I was tempted by them so he could try them too.  It was a lovely dish, the review he had read had said that she thought them very sweet, but I didn't find that.  I thought it was a really clean refreshing dish.  The cucumbers had been de-seeded and in a sauce that was very like a sweet chili.  The boy opted for a plate of Duck's Tongues.  Not very pleasant to look at as they totally looked just like a plate of long curvy grey tongues. They weren't very nice apparently, they had a strip of gristle down the center that initially the boy thought was a bone.  He wasn't sure if you were supposed to eat that bit or not, so he just left a stack of them on the side of the plate (not very appetising).  Even though both these dishes these were advertised as starters, the concepts of starters and mains didn't seem to exist as every thing arrived to the table once it was cooked so my main arrived before the cucumber.  All the portion sizes were really large, meaning we ordered way too much food. 

For mains we decided to get 2 veggie dishes and one meat for him.  I had fancied trying one of the many aubergine dishes, but as he went for aubergine with minced pork, I decided not too (I'm too nice).   I went for a potato dish instead that we both liked the look of, namely fried potato slivers with a chili.  This was really nice, it was very finely chopped matchsticks of potato which had been cooked very lightly. They were extremely al dente.  Initially I wasn't sure if I wanted them to be cooked for a little longer but then I got to like them.  They were tossed in oil and millions of fresh and dried chillies.  The dominant sensation was of the heat of the chili but as I really like heat, I thought this was just right.  The second dish I ordered was the Mapo Tofu.  This was similar in taste to the potato, so I there wasn't enough variety in my dishes.  The tofu was of the silken variety which I'm not overly fond of, I prefer my tofu firm, but the sauce was lovely, again loaded with chillies and a hint of sweet and sour.  The boy like his aubergine and minced pork dish but didn't think it anything special.  We shared a steamed rice and had a tsingtao beer each.

I needn't have worried about us being the only customers of the night as about 5 minutes after we entered it stared to fill up.  The two waiting staff were also always on the phone taking delivery orders so they seem to be doing a really good trade.  Although the waiter and waitress were very efficient and friendly, once we had finished our meal it took a long time to get the table cleared and we weren't asked if we wanted dessert or coffee.  When we eventually got their attention to clear the table, they immediately asked if we wanted them to box up our leftovers.  It was nice that they asked rather than us having to and I took the end of my two mains home as we had rather a lot left over (not like me, usually there is nothing left and I'm in pain).  Once the table was cleared it, we had to ask  a few times before we got the bill, which was reasonably at £34.80 not including service charge.

My food, left to right:  smashed Cucumbers, Mapo tofu & the Potato slivers with chili

The horrible duck's tongues

The exterior of the restaurant



the aubergine and minced pork



Would I go back?  Yes definately.  Does it change my mind about Chinese food?  A little bit, yes, so a few more Chinese restaurants will have to be tried out.