Min Jiang, The Royal Garden Hotel

Press Reviews (8)

• Zoe Williams (11th May 2009)
  6.5/10
  
  “Commanding spectacular views over Kensington Gardens, the room has been crammed with ersatz Ming-ness, fashionably up-lit but otherwise oppressively old-school” – from the beginning you can see the critic didn’t especially like this Kensington Chinese (which opened some time ago). Dim sum was good but “there seemed to be nothing here except the price that corresponded with the poshness”. The main attraction turns out to be the multiple-serving “duck fest”.
• Jasper Gerard (26th January 2009)
  8/10
  
  As the critic sagely observer, “London has never been particularly blessed with restaurants that combine gastronomy with a spot of astronomy”. The food at this 10th -floor newcomer, however, is “sexy”. Dim sum is ‘faultless”, and this is “the best place in London” to eat “Chinese duck”.
• AA Gill (19th January 2009)
  2/5 stars
  
  “Numbered ratings are the bane of critics’ lives”, says the critic. “We all hate them, because they assume that a thousand carefully chosen, nuanced words can be distilled into hieroglyphs”. So he’s giving them up. “They’ll still appear, but I’m going to let the office decide. The work experience can read the copy and say: ‘That sounds like a two.’ The review is my opinion, based on what I ate. The stars are someone else’s, based on what I write.” Well, even if, as we’ve noted Mr Gill’s own star awards often seem at odds with his words, it’s difficult to see that as an advance.
• Jay Rayner (7th January 2009)
  
  This new 10th-floor Kensington oriental “isn't cheap”, says the critic, “which makes it a special-occasion restaurant,” What we currently need, he opines, is affordable moments of luxury, ways to spoil ourselves which don't kill the bank balance, and he thinks that the “superlative” Peking Duck on offer here fits the bill pretty well. They do, however, tend to be rather “stingy” with the portions.
• Marina O'Loughlin (3rd December 2008)
  4/5 stars
  
  Oh dear, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree with Ms O’Loughlin about this tenth-floor Kensington Chinese. They make a big thing about duck there, and she concludes that “everything pales into insignificance in the long shadow of our formerly feathered friend”, which is the very opposite conclusion from our own review. But the duck is not the only thing she liked about it. The staff are “a real asset”, and overall she concludes that this is a place “able to hold its head up among the Hakkasans and Hunans” of the world.
• Charmaine Mok (12th November 2008)
  3/6 stars
  
  The “new Chinese restaurant on the tenth floor of Kensington's Royal Garden Hotel” is “perfectly nice, in the way that vanilla is”, says the critic. “And it has a spectacular view of Kensington Park, though only seen by day” (“by night, our view was rather more narcissistic as we peered at reflections of ourselves”). “The food, too, was nice”, even if a lot of dishes made the critic say “‘oh”, rather than “ooh”.
• Terry Durack (6th October 2008)
  16/20
  
  “From the 10th floor of the Royal Garden Hotel, you get a glorious view of Kensington Gardens and the Round Pond with its greylag geese and mute swans. But you're not here for the geese or the swans. You are here for the duck.” Thus begins this very positive review of a 10th-floor restaurant “dedicated to the art of Beijing duck… They will ask if you want to pre-order it when you ring, and ask again when you arrive. It could get annoying, but for one thing: the duck is very, very good”. For this is a place offering a taste of “Chinese fine dining, Singaporean style” – “lighter, more refined cooking with less oils and animal fats”.
• Brian Sewell (24th September 2008)
  3/5 stars
  
  It’s not just the “sublime” view which commends this 10th floor Chinese newcomer, in Kensington, to the paper’s long-established (art) critic. Its gentle style and high prices ensure it is not the place to take a “hungry rugger-playing godson”, but it is “perhaps the perfect treat to charm a slightly deaf maiden aunt on whose wealth a canny nephew has his eye”.