HAN DYNASTY
Verdict : 7.5/10 (worthwile revisit)
On 12 April 2008, a company and I revisited Han Dynasty for lunch (for the previous visit, read here).
We arrived at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. There were two other diners (Chinese young man and woman) and speaking loudly with the waiter). While we were eating, we some a couple of people who seemed to drop in to take a look at their Karaoke rooms, and another couple who had a take-away; all of these were young Chinese. If you fancy quiet lunch, around this hour is recommended.
As I have already wrote about the interior, I don't linger about it.
The first to arrive was this: stir-fried French beans with chili (£ 6.80). From the name I imagined a vegetarian dish, but I was wrong. French beans were stir-fried with chili and pretty salty pork mince. Apart from the dried chilies, the pork mince contained Sichuan pepper and it was quite hot. It contained also of something salty and fermented. What I could visibly recognise was pickled green leaves. It was a very strong, addictively nice dish.
The next was Sizzling beef fillet with black pepper (£ 8.50) that we chose from the sizzling dish section. So we were surprise the dish wasn't sizzling when arrived; it was far too wet to sizzle. However, it is a positive thing the 'sizzling' iron plate keeps the food warm.
It was sliced beef (I don't think it was fillet) stir fried with some vegetable, black pepper and fresh chili. It was not bat, but the quality of beef was not as high as we expected, even though we did not actually expected fillet for this price. I don't regret to have had this dish, but I won't order it again.
We also tried BBQ skewers. The menu says these are satays, but, when we ordered, the young Chinese waiter made sure that these were BBQs and not satays.
The meat was flavoured with salt, cumin and chilly sesame oil. We had one lamb and one beef, but the difference was indiscernible. It was not a superb stuff, but for £ 1 a skewer, not bad to have some as side dish or starter.
Even if it is not on menu, we could of course order plain rice: in here are two portions. It was well cooked (which is not as easy as you think).
As drink we had a complimentary pot of Chinese tea. If I remember well, the total bill came to £ 19.30 (£ 21.50 with tip). I was not convinced by the quality of beef, but the string beans dish was superb. The price was moderate, if not very cheap. I would like to come back to try other dishes.
Han Dynasty
Station St., Birmingham B5 4DY
Tel. 0121-6339396
