Cha Cha Moon

Press Reviews (9)

• Matthew Norman (15th July 2008)
  5/10
  
  The critic really doesn’t like Alan Yau’s Soho newcomer. It may offer “large helpings of unconscionably cheap, noodle-dominated Chinese food”, but in return you have to endure: “1) a wait for a table that's twice as long as you can possibly hope to spend at that table; 2) the worst acoustics in human history; 3) a dining area redolent of a medium-security prison in one of Amnesty's least favourite south-east Asian countries; and 4) tacit but relentless chivvying to depart said table, which begins, novelly enough, even before you sit down”.
• Marina O'Loughlin (11th July 2008)
  3/5 stars
  
  Ms O’Loughlin clearly wants our job! She’s using her longer-term reviewing perch as an opportunity to comment on the reviewing process, and Alan Yau’s Soho newcomer, as she correctly observes, “polarises reviewers”. [S]ince its opening a couple of months ago, Cha Cha Moon has attracted both slavering adoration and spluttering vitriol.”
• Giles Coren (7th July 2008)
  Meat/fish: 2
  
  
• AA Gill (9th June 2008)
  1/5 stars
  
  Uniquely among the major reviewers so far, Mr Gill is mainly “annoyed” by Alan Yau’s Soho newcomer. “Cha Cha Moon is a no-no-book, communal-tables Chinese noodle shop in the mood of Wagamama and the Great Depression… Cha Cha would be marvellously welcome if it were not just cheap, but good value. It isn’t… if you have a functioning palette.” Ah yes, what a glorious thing it is to be able to paint a meal in many colours. New sub-editor please.
• John Walsh (3rd June 2008)
  2/5 stars
  
  “I've heard of fast food, but this is ridiculous”, says the critic. Alan Yau’s much acclaimed newcomer seems to be “in a tearing hurry to sit you down, stick a napkin down your neck, take your order, ladle some won ton or ho fun down your throat, tap their feet and drum their fingers while you try to digest it, then bustle you out of the place so they can hurl two other people into your vacant spot on the bench”. He finds the operation “hip, super-efficient and almost entirely soulless”.
• Jan Moir (29th May 2008)
  
  Alan Yau’s Soho newcomer, has already, the critic concludes, “become one of the most exciting places in town”. She extols almost all the food, and proclaims it “cheap and healthy” too. “This is the perfect restaurant for these straightened times… Genius.”
• Terry Durack (28th May 2008)
  14/20
  
  “How long all the soup noodles, wok-fried dishes and side dishes are going to stay at £3.50 depends on who you ask. It could be two weeks or a year”, observes the critic. He appears correctly to have identified what Donald Rumsfeld would presumably describe as the major ‘known unknown’ in appraising Alan Yau’s new Soho noodle parlour. “So”, he says (rather optimistically in our view), “let's look beyond the question of price, to the question of how good it is”.
• Charmaine Mok (21st May 2008)
  3/5 stars
  
  One of TO's great strengths - if you buy the whole ‘authenticity’ thing – is its reviews by ‘natives”, and Ms Mok establishes her credentials by referring to her “local family-run caff” in Hong Kong. (And, if you want all the background on CCM, this is the article to read). From this lofty starting point, she proclaims the “benchmark dish, wonton noodles” at Alan Yau’s Soho newcomer to be a “let down”. Although “[t]hings improved” thereafter, she concludes that “[t]here's a lot of potential in this hip and cheerful operation” but that “for now, it has nothing on my local mein dong”.
• Fay Maschler (14th May 2008)
  4/5 stars
  
  Ms M is swept away by the credit-crunch-pleasing dishes at Alan Yau’s Soho newcomer, where all items are currently priced at £3.50. “Assuming that the menu pricing is calculated on the principle of what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts, apart from a rather drab item called beancurd roll, our many other choices all seemed to be swings.”