Down a ‘secret’ alley off Leicester Square, and from the people who gave us YiQi Panasia, comes YiQi Lah! with top Southeast Asian street food
I’ve always liked Newport Court, a pedestrian cut through to Chinatown. One side has now been brutally modernised, but the other side still retains the rather ramshackle charm it had when I used to buy second hand vinyl LPs from a tiny shop there.
YiQi Lah! Has opened what an estate agent might call bijou, but the rest of us would call tiny, offshoot of the mothership Yiqi Panasia here with just twenty covers inside.
As it’s a pedestrian route they have managed to put a few tables outside too, we didn’t try these as this lunchtime a ‘content creator’ had turned it into his personal studio and was swinging plates of food through the air as he filmed them.
The restaurant specialises in Malay, Singaporean and Thai food, so dishes are sometimes familiar, often not. The laminated menu (a good idea, as this is very messy eating) has pictures of each dish to help the confused to choose. I remember when many Chinese restaurants used to have plaster models of their dishes in the window to help out Westerners, although they usually put me off a lot more than they seduced me.
We kick off with something unfamiliar to me, Nasi Lemak Tarts. These come as a pair, the pastry shell very reminiscent of Portuguese Pasta del Nada but with a hint of coconut. Inside is cucumber, a slice of egg, a splodge of spicy-sweet sambal, crispy anchovies, and peanuts.
These are extremely complex and tasty, J does not like the anchovies, but then he’s never been one for anchovies anyway, I liked the whole creation and could easily have eaten both of them. Quite fiery though, if you’re not a chili-head.
Alongside are a clutch of Lemongrass Coconut Chicken Drumsticks. Gloriously crunchy exterior plus a nibble down the bone tastiness. The coconut is toasted and showered all over the chicken as well as the plate, so I use a spoon to scoop it all up. Whilst J is busy asking for some water (there’s no alcohol licence yet, we’re on Thai teas) I also sneak the last drumstick off the plate, there were five in all and so I had to be ruthless.
By the way, all the food in YiqiLah is halal, so you may like that or you may not.
On we went to a seafood Tom Yam soup. I’ve eaten this all over the world, well London and Singapore at least, and never had one I didn’t like. I’ve even eaten it for breakfast, so keen am I on that addictive sour/sweet/hot mix.
It is a messy eat, especially when sharing. The lovely waiter was now shovelling fresh napkins at us like a machine. You need scissors to successfully get the noodle element to your bowl, but I’ve never seen a restaurant that supplied them. Shielding our shirts as best we could we dived in.
It’s excellent, juicy fat prawn, abalone, crab stick and a myriad other ingredients including of course lots of lime and galangal. Good stock is key here, and this is perfectly balanced.
We also share ‘Mixed sauce beef brisket’, choosing to have it with rice but noodles or roti are also offered.
This is a very colourful plate packed with all kinds of veg, the meat and the rice is topped with a fried egg of all things, so I chop that into the rice. The tomatoes suffer the curse of all tomatoes sourced from Holland, hard as apples and tasteless.
Luckily the multi layered sauce on the brisket is great. The meat is tender and a bit fatty, which is okay as fat equals flavour but some people might not be keen. Cucumber slices crisply cut that fat, but I was unsure what the broken pieces of papadum were for, aside from decoration.
We didn’t do desserts, in fact I’m not sure there were any. The sun was blazing down and we were keen to get back to Norman’s for cold beers.
As a fast pit stop for great flavours and wallet friendly food, YiqiLa! Is one of the safer bets in Chinatown.
Mon – Thu: 12:00 – 22:30
Fri – Sat: 12:00 – 23:00
Sunday: 12:00 – 22:30
Address: Newport Court, Chinatown, London