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New Years Day, we decided to go Chinese for lunch. Hotel restaurants are always open with access and parking, so we went to Min Jiang on the tenth floor of the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington – famed for its duck, views and high-end cuisine.
The B-hound and Fun-ke-S got there first and warned us about a demonstration blocking the road outside the hotel. We got stuck in it anyway. They called next to warn us the kitchen was about to close. We were pulling into the underground car park. No problem.
Or so we thought! Yes, I am going to rant again. In the car park, unknown to us, we were on the wrong floor for disabled parking (rubbish directions). The lift lobby on our car park level, big wheelchair sign denoting access, had a huge step across the doorway for the wheelchair to go up and over, doors opening the wrong way and a turn to the lift. Duh! At ground floor, we exit this lift, wheel across the vertiginous road to another – platform wheelchair – lift positioned in the tiniest, narrow space. EazyD had to pull me into this, climb up, over me, and dance across the lift surround to get out, before the lift would move. KGG, KGGh, all the doormen and passers-by watched with incredulity. A good job he is a young(ish) fit bloke – give him a hat, bull whip and call him In-D-iana…!
So, twenty minutes after thinking we had arrived, we reached the restaurant. Thankfully, the B-hound had persuaded them to keep the kitchen open in the spirit of New Year bonhomie – he needed to play the crip card too; let’s face it, bonhomie doesn’t go too far in London restaurants - but we were a little more pressured that we would have liked in ordering and eating!
On the plus side, the views were fantastic, the space and access fine and, with good company, who cares about the rest? If you do, the duck was over-rated, food mediocre, prices too high – pretty much as you’d expect on New Years Day, I guess.
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