Your Kitchen, Queen’s Road: ‘we can’t keep ourselves from going back for more’ – review

Tucked away off the Triangle is new Chinese restaurant Your Kitchen that seems to have set out to cater to everyone, whether you’re looking for authentic cooking, the well known dishes you’ll find on most Chinese restaurant menus in the UK or simply a nice garden to sit in.

We enjoy the descent into dusk in the sporadically populated and surprisingly large garden, which is split over two levels. It’s rare to find a Chinese restaurant in Bristol with such a comprehensive al fresco option, but even more surprising is the extent of the tunnel-style rooms inside, the maze of which plays host to at least a dozen extra tables.

The garden at Your Kitchen is matched in size by the cavernous interior. Photo: Meg Houghton-Gilmour

The extensive menu boasted by Your Kitchen is divided two sections: traditional Hunan and Sichuan dishes followed by a couple of pages of what you might consider mainstream western chinese food.

Our incredibly attentive waitress struggled to stop her eyebrows creeping up in surprise as we ordered mainly from the first few pages of the menu. Her eyebrows only continued to climb as we followed up with a request for chopsticks, and didn’t flinch at the spice levels. By the time we asked to take the leftovers away, they’d almost made acquaintance with her hairline.

If a restaurant features a dish called Hunan deep fried stinky tofu (£7.80) on the homepage of their website, you can guarantee that I’m going to order it. The generous duplo blocks of tofu arrived doused in chilli oil and soy which sat atop a crispy exterior – so much so that our sweet yet omnipresent waitress suggested breaking apart the blocks to allow the sauce to seep into the fluffy interior. Once saddled with sauce the stinky element of the tofu is slightly less pronounced, but the hum it leaves behind would suggest some sort of fermentation. The spice is generous but not aggressive.

The stinky tofu was the first of many sizable dishes to arrive. Photo: Meg Houghton-Gilmour

Another dish that piqued my curiosity was grandma’s dish (£14.80). We had no idea what to expect as they hadn’t expanded beyond the family namesake. Grandma’s dish is an apt name if your grandma is well known for her obsession with sweet soy sauce. This is definitely one for the grandkids – rice, pork, mushrooms and celery are bound together in a soy steeped stir fry. Pleasant, but not one I’d order again.

Much to my disappointment the dish was not delivered to us by Grandma. Photo: Meg Houghton-Gilmour

The tofu skin (£14.80) is served in a hot bowl, and much to our surprise is peppered with strips of pork. Our attempt to order a delicious vegetarian main – thwarted. At first glance it appears mostly a noodle dish – but wait! They’re not noodles. The thinly sliced strips are in fact the tofu skin themselves. An incredibly satisfying discovery as the tofu skin had a fantastic bite to it, akin to an al-dente tagliatelle. The chew, backed by bountiful spice and umami is a delectable combination, and we can’t keep ourselves from going back for more. It’s a good job the portion sizes are so liberal.

A dish full of surprises! Photo: Meg Houghton-Gilmour

The mixed vegetable chow mein (£8.80) is very much the solid benchmarker we’d hoped for. It’s slippery, tasty and ultimately crowd pleasing. A dish that will placate those who don’t want the traditional menu, and one that suggests other elements of the, let’s call it ‘mainstream’, menu will be suitably satisfying.

I’ve never had a chow mein with asparagus before but it worked well! Photo: Meg Houghton-Gilmour

The house special starter is pleasingly generic to look at. Made up of a rib, satay skewer, prawn toast, a prawn wonton, spring roll and seaweed, but sadly not as consistent as it first looked. The single rib was dry and miserably lean and the satay skewer was horrifically overcooked – to the extent you basically had to swallow the thing whole as chewing was fruitless.

Easy on the eye but less so on the teeth. Photo: Meg Houghton-Gilmour

Finally Hunan style marinaded pork tripe (£8.80), possibly the most adventurous dish to complete the assembly gathering on our table. A mountain of sliced pork stomach and fresh cucumber, which combine to delivery a crunchy and chewy, fresh and yet offal infused affair. The tripe landed with a serious back of the throat kick of chilli.

As with most of the dishes, the Hunan pork tripe was doused in chilli oil. Photo: Meg Houghton-Gilmour

Your Kitchen is most certainly a venue I will be returning to, if nothing else just to try and make some further headway into the handbook of a menu they’ve created. The few traditional dishes we tried suggest many more exciting adventures to come, and I will be certain to recommend tofu skin to everyone I know – providing they’re not vegetarian.

Main photo: Meg Houghton-Gilmour 

95 Queen’s Road, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 1LW

www.yourkitchenbristol.com

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