Hokkien fried rice. one of my favorite dishes at Chinese restaurants. Where should I begin?
While I was at Vancouver’s ETEA, I remembered another family-run restaurant, called “No. 10 Restaurant,” at 10 Hogarth Place, London, which I visited multiple times in March 2023. It is in a hectic district in the capital of my great motherland. When I was at it, the restaurant was very small. It had only a few tables, with seats for about 20 people in total. The Chinese name of the place was 粗茶淡飯, which can be literally translated as “plain (or even more literally–coarse) tea, bland rice,” a very humble and self-deprecating expression alluding to the host’s admission that he or she doesn’t have a lot of money and resources and so can only afford cheap ingredients to prepare food for the guests.
(This was how it looked like before renovation.)
I ordered “Fujian friend rice” every time, which never disappointed me. I regret that I did not take any picture of the food — i.e. the thick sauce filled with diced pork, celeries, carrots, and prawns on top of the gold-yellowish rice–it looked good and tasted good. Either that I was biased since I have a weakness for home-cooked meals, or that any place earning a 4-star or above on google offers excellent services. In any case, the business was excellent. Numerous regular customers either dined in or ordered take-aways during my visits.
Each order cost me around 10 British pounds exclusive of tax and tip. Therefore, it was slightly cheaper than ETEA, notwithstanding that this restaurant is located in a more expensive city and area. I really love dining at small, humble, but cozy places like this. (I completely disagree with some of those negative reviews online. It’s very challenging to run a small restaurant in an expensive city like London, despite the huge demand for Asian-style food in a multicultural neighborhood.) Having read some horror stories about Asian restaurants, I have come to appreciate affordable restaurants that offer excellent food and services.
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I learned how to cook this dish in my spare time. As there are already to many recipes online and demo videos on YouTube, I hereby offer three special tips to deliver the best outcome:
1. The rice must be fried with egg before the sauce with other ingredients are added on top. We once dined at a crappy restaurant offering overpriced food. Its Fujian rice was not even egg-fried. What a rip-off! One must first prepare the rice in a cooker, before frying it with beaten egg(s). The glue-like, half-cooked egg(s) coating the rice would blend well with the ingredients on top and make the dish more delicious.
2. While stir-frying the multiple ingredients, they must be added in the proper order because some ingredients cook faster than others. Suppose the ingredients contain diced pork, carrots, green peas, mushrooms, and shrimps/prawns. The pork should go first, followed by carrots and peas, then mushrooms. The shrimps should come last. If they go simultaneously, the shrimps/prawns, for instance, would be overcooked: not only would they not look as nice, their freshness would be wasted.
3. Use a wok–Chinese-style with a concave bottom–to stir fry, not an ordinary frying pan, even though a frying pan also works. A big wok, e.g. 14-inch diameter, works better too, all other things equal. With a big wok, one can flip the multiple ingredients freely and with ease while stir-frying, and can ensure that the egg mixes with all the rice readily.
Amateurish cooks can seldom compete with experienced chefs at decent restaurants though, and my home-cooked Fujian rice cannot compare with the ones I enjoyed with my family in the old days.
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Years ago, my family frequented a Chinese restaurant, called Golden Jade Palace, in the shopping plaza of our (private) housing estate. We had lunch and dinner there every weekend. During summer, Mom, sister, and I sometimes went there thrice in a single day as the afternoon meal packages were very affordable and yummy for the price (roasted pork and veggies with noodles, for example). I typically went out to purchase the latest copies of some gossip magazines while waiting for the food, or just did a little shopping with my sister at some gift shops in the same mall. Mom and Dad would chat with the waiters.
Yes, Fujian fried rice was always my favorite dish. The serving was sufficient for four people. Sister did not like it as much as I did, and tried to persuade mom to order “yin-yang fried rice” instead. I won half of the times. The sauce on the top was always so thick–almost creamy–and so full of ingredients that I was sometimes tempted to get a big scoop of the ingredients alone while filling my bowl. Sister always coaxed me. Dad nicknamed this dish after my nickname (which I would not reveal here, hehe!) as he nagged me, “Don’t read the magazine: eat or it gets cool!”
In fact, Golden Jade closed after some years and was replaced by Fuk Choi, a new Chinese restaurant. Mom and Dad still frequented the new restaurant and became friends with the new waiters while I studied and worked overseas. When I went back in 2019, a middle-aged waitress, who chatted with them regularly, asked after Dad, not having seen him with Mom for some months. Mom replied calmly, “He passed.” The waitress was speechless for a few seconds: then she uttered some words of comfort while gently rubbing Mom’s hand. But the place was not quite like the old one. Not long after that visit, I came back. Meanwhile, my favorite magazine–and the publicly-listed company that printed it–are gone. Now I am here, miles away from my old home, yeaning for that familiar taste of scallop and prawns in that rich-flavored sauce.
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I heard that No. 10 Restaurant, or Shanghai No. 10 上海10號 as it is now called, recently under renovations. It even hired a new chef. A lovely little place it once was, it likely has become better. I will no doubt dine there again whenever I am back in Motherland–my only motherland.