TAI PAN
On 26 October (Friday) 2007, D and I went to a Japanese restaurant called Taipan in Birmingham Chinatown for dinner. I am not keen on going to Japanese restaurants abroad, but it was D's name day and he wanted to go there.
This photo was taken on another day during the day time. It does not have particularly Japanese look, and I think the owner is Chinese. The young guy standing to the left is the owner or manager.
This is the interior. At the centre of the floor, there is a large sushi counter with belt-conveyor, and there are tables around the counter. You don't see many people in this photo, but on this Friday night, the tables were almost completely full, and even these counter chairs got occupied while we were eating.
On that day, the composition of the clients were 70% Chinese, 15% Japanese and 15% others. Reflecting the customers' nationality, this restaurant offers also some Chinese style Japanese dishes. If you are Chinese, you will probably appreciate that.
Once you are in Japanese restaurants, sushi is a must order. This is set sushi C, best in the category, for £10. I don't dare to critisize by my Japanese standard, because it is probably pointless in Birmingham where there are so few choices of Japanese restaurants.
Is it good? I guess it depend on what you expect. If you expect the standard you get in Japan, you will surely get disappointed, but if you don't, it is probably acceptable.
This is Seafood and vegetable tempura, £7. It contains 3 king prawns, a shitake mushroom, a small aubergine, a carrot slice, a baby corn, and a piece of green pepper. It came with dipping sauce, which I thought was too little, although tasted ok.
Even if the batter is the major part of this dish, it was not bad for £7. Apart from a lump of raw wheat ball in the mushroom, they were decently cooked. The prawns, however, lacked in texture; they should use fresher shell fish. We had this with a bowl of white rice for £1.50.
This is yaki-tori, £3. There were unnecessary vegetable bits inbetween the chicken pieces (especially the sliced mooli was awful), but the chicken itself tasted fine. They should go well with white rice or beer.
We had also a small bottle of Asahi beer and one genmai cha (a pot of Japanese tea), and the bill came to £25.10, which we thought was acceptable.
One thing I noticed was that the most of the dinners at that night were eating Hot pot. If I remember well it cost £15 per person for all-you-can-eat including belt-conveyor sushi. It is a Chinese style hot pot, but many Japanese like it too. We want to try it next time.
<Post Scriptum>Since the beginning of 2008, Taipan stopped to serve sushi as they refurbished the place and removed sushi making mashine.It still serves tempura, but it is now a Cantonese restaurant with Chinese hot pot as speciality.
Tai Pan
Address: 41-43 Hurst Street, B5 4DJ
Tel.: 0121-6222287
