A review of C&R Café Restaurant in Chinatown, London - YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Sign in Welcome!Log into your account Forgot your password? Password recovery Recover your password Search Sign in Welcome! Log into your account Forgot your password? Get help Password recovery Recover your password A password will be e-mailed to you. YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Home Food Tom Parker Bowles C& R Café Restaurant review By Tom Parker Bowles - July 17, 2022 Tom enjoys a riot of textures and flavours at a Malaysian restaurant in London’s Chinatown. Hello darkness, my old friend. OK, so this particular pal sure ain’t a looker. Penang prawn mee, that is, classic hawker food, a dish of Chinese birth that has long made Malaysia its home. God, I love this soup with a passion that borders on the obsessive – dank, muddy brown broth, the colour of monsoon ditch water, with small globules of angry scarlet oil. Whole prawns, boiled egg, slices of pork, deep fried shallots, yellow egg noodles and scraps of green vegetation all jostle for space and attention. Tom’s favourite Penang prawn mee. Image: Nic Crilly-Hargrave And here, at C&R Café Restaurant in London’s Chinatown, they get it just right. Even my friend and fellow diner Rain, who comes from Kuantan on the east coast of Malaysia, agrees. There used to be a branch of C&R on Westbourne Grove in Notting Hill, and I had an office next door. I slurped this soup most days. As I said, it’s not going to win any beauty contests but when it comes to taste, few things come close. The broth has a rich, fishy, slightly fetid depth that teeters just on the right side of depraved, thanks to that all-important prawn-head stock (the backbone of the dish), and a hearty dollop of sambal belacan, the chilli and fermented shrimp-paste sauce that flows like lava through the veins of Malaysian cooking. It stars in their kangkung belacan too, stir-fried with morning glory – another Malaysian staple – beautifully pongy with a robust, lingering heat. Nasi lemak, complete with dried anchovies. Image: Nic Crilly-Hargrave For those looking for something a little more soothing, then wat tan ho is all about soft, glutinous comfort, with fat rice noodles, bouncy fish balls, fish cake, squid and prawns all enveloped in a gloriously gloopy embrace. It’s a subdued riot of pleasing textures, although we agree it lacks the all-important wok hei (or ‘breath of the wok’), that essential, slightly charred tang, obtainable only from those restaurant-standard wok burners that burn hotter than Hades. The restaurant in Soho’s Chinatown. Image: Nic Crilly-Hargrave Five-spice loh bak – fat rolls of minced pork wrapped in bean curd skin – are lustily seasoned and deep fried to a golden brown, while roti canai – gossamer-thin, gently blistered bread, dunked in fragrant curry sauce – is Roti King good. Rain doesn’t think much of the dried anchovies in our nasi lemak. ‘A bit cheap,’ she says. ‘Inferior quality.’ Not that I would know the difference. But then she comes from a city renowned for the quality of its dried seafood. And if it’s her only complaint, well, that’s fine by me. I nod, in what I hope is a knowing way, and get stuck back into my Penang prawn mee. About £20 per head. C&R Café Restaurant, 4 Rupert Court, London W1; cnrcaferestaurant.com RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR Kids can eat for free at these restaurants during October half-term How to make the viral negroni sbagliato with prosecco at home 7 Halloween recipes with serious hex factor Popular in Food Gabriela Peacock 14-day plan Anytime baked eggs May 23, 2021 Joe Wicks’ maple-glazed chicken thighs with Asian slaw June 6, 2021 Mary Berry is returning to TV screens for a brand new June 15, 2021 Eleanor Maidment My summer taste notes July 4, 2021 Uyen Luu’ s sticky mustard marmalade ribs July 25, 2021 Annie Bell’ s white peach bellinis recipe August 8, 2021 M& S has launched a new crunchy Caramilk-inspired golden chocolate spread August 24, 2021 Deliciously preserved pickle and jam recipes September 19, 2021 Gordon Ramsay’ s bang bang cauliflower October 3, 2021 Wow right now Clodagh McKenna’ s speedy family dinners October 24, 2021 Popular CategoriesFood2704Life2496Fashion2240Beauty1738Celebrity1261Interiors684 Sign up for YOUMail Thanks for subscribing Please check your email to confirm (If you don't see the email, check the spam box) Fashion Beauty Celebrity Life Food Privacy & Cookies T&C Copyright 2022 - YOU Magazine. All Rights Reserved