Food: Local bites: Hee's Chinese

Mixed bag on my Sunday morning.

I was feeling a bit homesick, so got a few mates together and we went out in search of local Chinese joints around Hounslow. Now Hounslow is pretty much an Indian/Pakistani dominated area so we had little hope of finding anything near decent and was about to head to New Malden- which is Korea Town for a bit of Soju and Bi Bim Bhap when I saw a place called Hee's.

So we pulled over, admired the location- it was between a Kebab shop and a newsagents and went it for chow. It was actually quite a solid chinese meal- reasonably sized dishes, good sauces, good selection, a find for this part of town. Actually, I went to New Malden for Korean earlier this week, but forgot my camera and my reaction to Soju, so ended encountering a memorably unyielding lamp post. I'm preparing a piece on a cool place there so stay tuned.

Anyway.

We ordered char siew fried rice, ginger lamb, beef in a black bean sauce and a braised tofu dish. I'm always at a disadvantage in these situations because my chinese literacy isn't quite up to scratch and I don't speak Cantonese. Most UK and US China Towns and Chinese immigrants to are Cantonese which makes my superb Hokkien and Teow Chew utterly useless. Usually I can get away with Mandarin, but luckily, my Cantonese mate was with me. So we sorted the ordering and I got down to taking in the place for a proper review. I didn't bring a camera with me, but will do for the next review

Decor: The usual Chinese paintings and characters adron the off white wall paper and the universal Chinese restaurant white table cloth with white plastic chopsticks hold no surprises.

Food:

• Portions are reasonable. A meat dish split between 2-3 provided a good amount on each plate.
  
• Ingredients were reasonable. The broccoli with the Tofu was slightly revived, but the Tofu itself was fresh enough. Surprisingly, the peppers with the Beef were very fresh.
  
• Taste
• Beef in Black Bean sauce. A good balance between the Black Bean and the meat and veg is hard to get and Hee's was dead on. In these smaller Chinese restaurants, you usually get a whooping amount of Black Bean which just overwhelms your palate. Beef was tender and the peppers were fresh and crunchy. 7.5/10

• Ginger Lamb. The Lamb was subtly flavored with just a hint of ginger but not as tender as we had hoped. Hee's fell into the trap of padding out the dish with onions which is a big no-no in my book, although it wasn't that excessive. 6/10

• Braised Seafood Tofu. Hmm, I'm going to grade this one quite high even though it isn't the best I've had. I'm giving it the thumbs up because the sauce is well flavored with oyster sauce without being overpowering. And it had a good consistency, without excessive corn flour added. The tofu was commendably braised to a lovely soft, smooth, texture but they missed the boat on the seafood topping with was pretty tasteless and clearly a mince of flour, sea sticks (shudder) and a token amount of prawn. 8/10
  

• Char Siew fried rice. Enough said. I'm of the opinion that fried rice should be dish by itself and not a rice accompanyment- which it was this time around. Out voted by friends again. Competently done with a good amount of meat and veg inside with loose eggs but nothing special. 5/10 due to nature of ordering

Service was pretty good, we never really had to wait long for anything and the tea refills kept coming.

Pricing was moderate, meat dishins going at around 9 sterling.

Overall, it's a solid place, earning itself an entirely arbritary 7/10. In real terms, that means that it's a good place to chow if you live around here but not something to look up if you're in the area.

Hee's Chinese Restaurant
476-478, Great West Rd
Hounslow Middlesex
TW5 0TA
Tel: 020 8577 3817