Golden Solent, Lee
The Chinese New Year, celebrated recently, was dedicated to the Ox – and cards to celebrate the festival were still on show on Golden Solent's window ledge.
One of the oldest and most important of festivals for the Chinese around the world, it brings families together to welcome in the new lunar year, to feast and to wish each other good fortune.
Another tradition is to sweep houses clean from top to bottom to rid the home of any bad luck.
Golden Solent's spick and span restaurant – it shines, it glows, it pulsates with cleanliness – clearly demonstrated the owners' attachment to tradition and essential restaurant practices.
This new addition to Lee-on-the-Solent's High Street – it opened last year – goes a step further by offering bento boxes, those red and black lacquered compartmentalised boxes which also have a place at Chinese New Year's homes and restaurants, the tray with its eight compartments symbolising togetherness and fortune.
But first, a sweep around the small, well-formed restaurant before delving into the contents of those bento boxes and the extensive menu.
Red is the predominant colour here, with tablecloths, lanterns, dragons and wall ornamentation all in a variety of reddish hues.
Costumed Chinese characters demonstrate their finery in framed pictures, the style of Golden Solent traditional and simple.
You get the impression that this is a relatively swift meal environment rather than a lingering one, with takeaway and delivery trade.
There are no fewer than 247 items on the menu.
But, of course, aficionados of Chinese meals will probably go straight towards the crispy aromatic duck, sweet and sour king prawns, spare ribs with barbecued sauce with a mix of stir-fried beansprouts and fried rice with maybe some choi mein, sesame prawn toasts and spring rolls on the side.
Bean curd; soups; beef, lamb, chicken, pork, duck, seafood; noodles and chop suey, that very non-Chinese western creation all bounce off the seven pages.
You might hesitate at the Extra Potions, those seeking magic finding chips and curry sauce instead.
Prices are low, even the Extra Special Set Meals with their Mandarin Feasts or Ocean Treasures suggesting a lot of bought-in rather than wok-made cooking going on here.
My bento box with four compartments, a mere 5.90, contained mixed vegetables – mangetout, corn, carrot, tomato, cucumber, water chestnuts, bean sprouts – in a shiny, indecipherable sauce. Beef with chillies, thin sugar-coated strips, didn't taste of anything bar crunchy caramel, more chillies perhaps perking up this part of the bento choice.
Fried rice was perfectly acceptable as was the crispy seaweed, with spring rolls the best of the bunch. This kitchen seems to prefer bottles and boxed pre-prepared food over fresh ingredients to cater for the lucrative takeaway trade, now standing at around 350 outlets in the Portsmouth area and rising.
Make it fast and keep the cost down please is more often than not today's mantra, places such as Golden Solent only too happy to oblige. If this is your chosen path to a meal out, this is the eatery for you, service charming, helpful and smiling.
A Chinese beer, Tsing Tao, made my bill less than a tenner not including service. But what I would really have liked is authentic made-from-scratch food that a Chinese family would have sat down to eat at Chinese New Year or on any day of the year.
Golden Solent, 63 High Street, Lee-on-the-Solent, PO13 9BU. (023) 9255 3388.
Open: From 11.30am-2pm and 4.30pm-11.30pm.
Food: ***
Service: ****
Atmosphere: ***
Disabled access: Step up to restaurant but otherwise easily managed. Disabled toilet.
How to get there: Once in Lee-on- the-Solent, the High Street is parallel to Marine Parade adjacent to the Solent, the restaurant on the right if accessing it via Pier Street or Manor Way once on the High Street. Parking: on-street.
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Weather for Portsmouth
Wednesday 08 February 2012
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