Jiangnan cuisine is quite unfamiliar to me. It is yet another new regional Chinese restaurant offering new flavours to London diners. It is not the standard Cantonese menu that most are familiar with as they serve Zhejiang, Shanghainese and Jiangsu cuisine.
Cheli can be found in one of those new purpose built complexes that seem to be dominating the new skyline around Elephant and Castle. Its one of those new style Chinese restaurant that London needs. Cheli’s modern dining room is a vast bright space, with sophisticated modern design, large picture windows and circular booths lining one side of the room.
The clientele seems to be made up of Chinese students with daddy’s black card and locals. A four-top table of those students near us, ordered an insane number of dishes to go with the bottle of Japanese whisky that they brought with us. Not only did they finish all the food but also that whole bottle of whisky which they drank like tea. Astonishing.
Jiangnan Cuisine
Not knowing much about Jiangnan cuisine, it was not easy to choose from the menu. Helpfully, the highlighted chef’s selection has handy photos of the dishes. Wanting to try some new dishes, we ended up with a strange variety of dishes that is not your typical Chinese meal.
Jiangnan cuisine, also known as Huaiyang cuisine, is a style of Chinese cooking from the Jiangnan region, encompassing the areas of Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang.
What to order at Cheli
The menu is quite tricky to navigate, as it is not laid out in the normal manner and it mixes up starters and mains. It doesn’t help when the dishes are unfamiliar and the serving staff is not forthcoming with recommendations. The saving grace is that they have nice pictures of the dishes of their chef’s specialities to help you order.
Whilst waiting for my guest, I thought I’d order a little starter. This one caught my eye was “lotus roots stuffed with glutinous rice”. This, I later learned, is quite popular not just in its original home of Jiangsu but all over the country now. This dish is a slow-braised lotus roots stuffed with glutinous rice and drizzled with an aromatic osmanthus syrup. I’ve never this on any other restaurant menus and I can see why it is popular. The lotus root is still crunchy, despite the long cooking time and the rice and sweet syrup adds an intriguing note that confuses your senses. Even though this is a sweet dish, it is usually served as a starter or to go with other savoury dishes in a main course. Although I see that some places will list this in the dessert section of the menu.
Showstopping dishes
The star dish with a touch of theatre is the Peking duck. Expertly carved at the table. This is not the crispy duck that London Chinese restaurants have been serving, where the crispy fried duck is shredded before serving. Here, these beautifully lacquered whole roast ducks are brought to your table in all their golden glory. The skin is expertly sliced and served with pancakes, hoisin sauce, cucumber and spring onion. Although the menu doesn’t mention it, there is a second part to this dish. They take the rest of the duck and serve it up as a bonus second dish. We chose to have it fried, salt and pepper style. If you are not Chinese, you probably won’t appreciate the boniness of the second part of this dish.
The other show-stopping dish is the Signature lychee sweet and sour fish. Served in this glorious yellow serving dish, it looks fit for an emperor. The whole fish is fried and then bathed in a sweet and sour sauce. Loved the crispy fish and the very moreish sauce. You can have this dish on its own or as one a many dishes to go with rice, family style.
To balance out the dishes on the table, we ordered the crowd favourite mapo tofu. Here, the tofu was flavoured with only hint of black bean, lightly spiced with spicy bean paste. A perfect accompaniment for rice.
There is a succint wine list and a selection of Chinese wine and Baiju. Although their bar area seems to be missing a mixologist, they do have a cocktail menu in addition to the wine list. To cater to the tastes of their clientele and Korean Wave trend they also have a Soju menu.
Other Chinese Restaurants in London to try
- Fine Cantonese Royal China
- House of Ming
- Hakkasan London
There is an array of vegetables on offer here. There are lots of Chinese veg options like Kai Lan but we opted for bean shoots, stir-fried with garlic.
There is an impressive cocktail menu but no sign of a bartender at the bar. There is also an impressive selection of Baiju behind the bar which I am guessing would be quite in demand with their clientele.
The dessert menu is short and sweet. As Chinese desserts normally comprise of sweet soups (and occasionally toffee banana) and are unfamiliar to non-Chinese diners.
Mango, pomelo, sago is the ubiquitous flavour now found everywhere, from the bubble tea chains to the local hole-in-the-wall places in Chinatown. So, of course, we had to order this at Cheli. It didn’t disappoint, a fragrant mango and coconut soup with little bits of bitter and citrussy pomelo and chewy bits of sago pearls.
Cheli is a welcome addition to the Chinese dining spots, serving the lesser-known Jiangnan cuisine in London, with so many interesting regional Chinese flavours to explore. I need to revisit to try all the other intriguing dishes that I didn’t get to try this time, like the pig trotters. Head south of the river to Elephant and experience this for yourself.
Cheli Elephant Park
56-58 New Kent Rd,
Elephant Park,
London SE1 6FU
Tel: 020 8050 9618
EatCookExplore was a guest of Cheli
