John's review of Hunan

i used to come to this restaurant with my family in the late eighties and early nineties. we always loved it. i moved away and i did not return until tonight. my wife booked a table several weeks ago. we picked the hunan because we were meeting a friend of mine, who is a director and a partner in one of the pimlico green companies, and so it was most easy for her to join us – and while i had not been to the hunan for a decade, at least, my friend told me it was her favourite restaurant and it had only got better. she told that there were no menus, they brought you a succession of delicious dishes, and the service was excellent. unfortunately, because my wife booked rather than my friend, the owners did not recognise the name so we were given a rather dreadful table upstairs. the food was delicious – but only arrived after chronic prompting – and arrived in tiny samples. the food was good (rather than excellent) – but the service was terrible – our service was overseen by a woman (apparently chinese) who seemed to think we had no idea about chinese food. after a series of annoying discrepancies and extremely sparse offering the evening was (finally, and completely) ruined when we were presented with crispy duck rather than sliced duck. anyone who is familiar with the difference between these two dishes knows that the difference is irreconcilable. the chinese woman played dumb. she refused to acknowledge what she had herself pretended to write down only an hour before: sliced, not crispy duck. in the event the crispy duck was dry and tasteless. clearly, the management had believed we would not know the difference. appalling – stupi – completely unnecessary. the attempts by the maitre d' to pretend that it was a mistake were embarrassing: as he apologised for the woman's behaviour she stood behind him glaring… never again.

the reason the evening was finally, and completely, ruined by the duck incident was the barefaced belief by the chinese woman (i believe the proprietor's wife) that we were so ignorant we didn't know one dish from the other. how wrong she is!