A Chinese restaurant is not the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word Kaizen, it being more associated with the Japanese practice of continuous improvement in manufacturing industries than with restaurants. But I’ve heard so many recommendations for Kaizen in Blanchardstown , Dublin 15 that I find myself heading out to the shopping centre there, appetite sharpened for what is to come.
It’s not actually in the shopping centre. It’s on the first floor of a strip of restaurants and shops to the side of it, with a view out to where the Manna delivery drones once buzzed. Now it’s just McDonald’s without the modernistic delivery system.
So upstairs we trek, and it’s still looking very suburban strip mall until we come to the entrance of Kaizen. And then, quite the surprise – swirling black-and-white floor tiles, chandeliers, glossy white tables and rather lovely gold-rimmed china.
There is of course a Chinese menu, the one that us lot not accustomed to the nuances of Chinese food call a “secret menu”. I had suspected as much, watching the Chinese customers digging into dishes I dearly wanted to ask about. Why do we feel – well, some of us – like we’re missing out?
My suspicion has always been that this is where the offal lives, but it turns out not so. The soups are more substantial and more than twice the price on the Chinese menu (€24 versus €9.50), and this is where the free-range chicken and pork appear, including Cantonese sizzling free-range chicken, which must be ordered a day in advance (€25 for half, €50 for whole).
Bi Lian Liu, the owner who grew up in Foshan, Guangdong, tells me that texture and flavour are important in traditional Cantonese cooking, hence the choice of free-range chicken. I discover this after my visit, when I follow up on the provenance of the produce.
The menu has plenty of recognisable dishes – sweet and sour, stir-fries, chow mein and roast meats – and these seem to be what most of the Irish families in the room are ordering. But Liu is most associated with dim sum from her Ka Shing restaurant on Wicklow Street in Dublin 2, so that is our focus. And the parade of bamboo steamer baskets duly arrives.
A stream of gorgeous broth pours out of the Shanghai soup dumplings (€9.50 for four) when I put one on a spoon and pierce its silky wrapper with a chopstick. The minced pork filling is loose and juicy rather than packed into a dense little lump. The steamed shrimp and Chinese chive dumplings (€9 for three) are translucent, the green of the chives clearly visible through the slightly chewy, starch-based dumpling skin, which has quite a different texture to an ordinary wheat-flour wrapper. The last of our steamed dishes is bean curd rolls (€7 for three), soft and slippery in oyster sauce, with the wonderfully yielding texture of tofu skin wrapped around a prawn and pork filling.
Salt and chilli prawn dumplings in a Typhoon Shelter (€8.50 for three) look almost like little pumpkins, their tomato-coloured, pleated skins deep-fried and filled with prawns, then tossed with toasted garlic, sliced red and green chillies and spring onions. All the toppings you’ll get in a spice bag. What to drink with all these flavours is another matter.
The wine list ranges from Pinot Grigio for €36 to a Dujac Morey-St-Denis Monts Luisants for €280, with some interesting picks, but not necessarily wines I would put with this food. So I follow the example of the Chinese diners in the room and order a pot of jasmine t…