The Gourmet Kitchen

Sometimes it is easy to forget that Chinese food is better than mediocre reheated glutinous messes that so many takeaway places sell you. I’ve been lucky recently to go to a couple of restaurants that have reminded me that this genre of cooking really can rise up above the average and be delicious.
Gourmet Kitchen wasn’t one of them. Cash only, by the way, if you feel tempted to visit for a range of the following delights:
* Reheated chips.
* Tasteless fried rice with no texture.
* Chilli beef in a honey glaze looked like cardboard, tasted like cardboard and the honey glaze was sweet and sour sauce with chilli thrown in.
* Prawn cheung bau — prawns in batter (didn’t expect the batter either) with cashew nuts in very thick hoisin sauce. To be honest, you can’t really go wrong with hoisin, and this was the best part — overpowering and sickly in large quantities as it is. There was more batter than prawn, the prawns tasted off and the batter was soggy and chewy. Horrible.
* A side of beansprouts for me — even those tasted bad. How can you make beansprouts taste bad?
* One prawn cracker was more than enough — insipid, thin, soggy with oil.
You can see where this dinner went — in the bin. I am now on a mission to track down a reasonable takeaway Chinese restaurant in East Lothian that stands up for it’s cuisine and makes it taste like it should!