Panda’s Kitchen, London: “It requires your full attention” – Restaurant review | Food

Panda’s Kitchen, 152 Station Road, Harrow HA1 2RH (pandas.kitchen). Starters £6.50-£12.80; main courses £10.80-£26.80; desserts £5.50-£6.50; wine from £19; Tsingtao beer £4.50

We all find solace in different places. A few months ago I received an email from a reader who had been caring for his ailing father at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, where I grew up. One evening, after spending the day at his bedside, he needed dinner and found his way to Panda’s Kitchen, a Sichuan restaurant on that stretch of Station Road in Harrow that had long been a mini Chinatown, amidst the Gujarati cafes and oriental barbecue houses. He was clearly finding something distracting amid the tension and emotional chaos of raising his father.

I could relate to this. My parents’ house was not far from Northwick Park Hospital. They both spent time there, and one of them tried to die there. (My mother was even a non-executive director of the hospital whose intensive care unit she oversaw for a while.) Anyone who has reached the age when caring for parents is part of life, even if only temporarily, knows the irregular rhythm. We hope for something calm. We hope for something sweet and painless; but we don’t always get it. Tossed about on the raging oceans of stomach-churning drama, we swim desperately in search of still waters. Meals become more than just fuel. If you don’t feed yourself, you’re no good for anyone, so they have some use and some necessity. But they’re also a reminder of normality, of a time before the call came calling you to the sickbed. And all of that is really comforting.

In theory, the kind of food Panda’s Kitchen serves shouldn’t be considered comforting. We’re old hands at the Sichuan repertoire by now, aren’t we? We know the chili explosions and the deep, salty, fiery broths; the sunset-colored oil baths and the peppercorns that make your lips and tongue tingle like your name was whispered in the next room. If anything, it should be considered discomfort food. But a bowl of something so powerful and so intricately layered that it demands your full attention can sometimes be just the comfort we need.

It helps that, although Panda’s Kitchen is a plain, oblong space, it is still decorated in a deep imperial red, with red banquettes and hanging basket lanterns. This gives the whole thing a womb-like atmosphere. Don’t come looking for anything fancy, though. There is nothing fancy about Panda’s Kitchen. The tables are wipe-clean. The laminated menus are wipe-clean. If you ask for aloe vera or sour plum juice from the soft drinks menu, they put a plastic bottle in front of you. You are allowed to crack the seal yourself. Ask, and you will be served a glass with ice.

All the familiar Sichuan dishes are here. I have to order the black Jew’s ear mushroom salad. The soft, slippery, crinkled mushroom lobes somehow manage to be slightly gelatinous and crunchy at the same time. The soy vinegar dressing is invigorating. There’s the unbridled kick of the red chile and the airy flavors of the cilantro. It’s both dramatic and refreshing; a reminder that all flavors are about to be turned up a notch. Another Sichuan classic, gong bao shrimp, is also on point. The seafood is fresh and squeaky; the acidity of the slightly thickened sauce contrasts with its sweetness. And when all the shrimp are gone, there’s the meditative process of poking your chopsticks between the fine cubes of celery to give the now-slippery peanuts the win.

Dry-fried green beans with minced pork and chili bring crunch to the table. Also on the menu are double-cooked pork, Chongqing chicken, and a stew that’s less a dinner than a challenge to be conquered. Avoid sticking a chili-dipped finger in your eye, as I once did. These are the familiar orders, but there are other things. Starters include crispy Sichuan pork strips, a collection of glorious words that belong together. The meat has been marinated and then breaded in a golden layer of echoing crispness. Along comes a seasoning blend of chili, ground Sichuan peppercorns, and, I suspect, MSG fairy flavor powder. Lift up a crispy pebble. Dip it in the seasoning blend. Repeat. Sea bass and catfish are presented in many ways, both whole and as fillets: red braised or dry slow cooked; with pickled cabbage and chili or ginger and spring onion. We first fried the fillets in a very light batter and then tossed them in a sauce made from Sichuan chili bean paste until they were almost dry, so it looks like the sauce is in the batter.

There are also dishes on the small “seasonal menu,” though it’s not clear what season they have in mind, because they’re winter stews, and today it’s hot and steamy. Then again, in Chengdu, Sichuan’s capital, it often is. A ceramic bowl filled with chunks of red-braised lamb is served, with equally meaty, curling sheets of tofu and slow-cooked potatoes. The whole thing swims in a thick sauce full of soy, chilli heat and the sweetness of the lamb. The crumbling potatoes act as a thickener. You can eat it with rice, but it feels like a full meal. Although it’s very Sichuan, it also goes well with things like Liverpool’s Scouse or Welsh Monmouth Stew, those dishes that take a little precious and expensive meat so much further through the alchemy of seasoning and time.

The Sichuan Mao roast duck is a quiet showstopper. Bone-in chunks of something akin to Cantonese roast duck bob in a light, chilli-infused broth full of bean sprouts, handfuls of coriander, dried chillies and more. The once crispy, lacquered skin is now soft and salty, the meat falling away from the bones, which pile up. It’s a soup that fights for main course status and manages that very well. There’s a dessert menu, but I suspect the Irish cream cheesecake wasn’t made on site. As always with such places, I leave feeling that I haven’t done the menu justice; that the three of us have barely scratched its imperial red surface today. Incidentally, my correspondent’s father is home now and doing well. His son will have to come up with another excuse for a helping of thrill-eating.

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While the overall inflation rate has steadily declined from 6.7% a year ago to 2.2% now, menu price inflation remains much higher, according to the latest quarterly update from foodservice marketing firm Lumina Intelligence. Pub and bar menu prices are up 5.5% compared to Q2 2023, and menu prices across the foodservice sector are up 4.5%. The lowest inflation is in the coffee and sandwich shop market.

Nottingham’s Japanese-inspired Kushi-Ya, my 2022 Restaurant of the Year, has announced it is moving. It will open on September 5 at a new location on Low Pavement in the city, with twice the cover capacity and a private dining room. As co-chef Simon Carlin puts it: “Same atmosphere, just more space.” (kushi-ya.co.uk)

And sad news of a significant loss: after 17 years, chef Tom Pemberton has announced the closure of the highly regarded Hereford Road restaurant in west London. The restaurant was heavily influenced by Pemberton’s time as head chef at Fergus Henderson’s St John Bread and Wine in Spitalfields and was a fixture in restaurant List of the magazine’s 100 best restaurants in the UK.

Jay Rayner’s cookbook Nights Out at Home: Recipes and Stories from 25 Years as a Restaurant Critic (Penguin, £22) is available from guardianbookshop.com for £19.80.

Email Jay at [email protected] or follow him on X @jayrayner1