Chi Kitchen, London *

Last week we headed over to Chi Kitchen in Debenhams on Oxford Street to test out the Christmas Menu, and it certainly exceeded expectations.

The menu is created by Group Consultant Chef Ping Coombes. Since being crowned the winner of MasterChef in 2014, Ping has embraced the chance to spread her knowledge, by promoting Asian food around the UK and abroad and the menu we dined from was a sharing menu, so you just let them bring up the food and you chow down on it!

The starters consisted of three small dishes…

Chilli Prawns- deep-fried prawns, with chilli, curry leaves, garlic, onions, spring onions, walnuts and salt & pepper, served with chilli lime sauce…

Turkey Sliders – Minced turkey sliders with salt & pepper which were a real winner for me as I find turkey can often be so bland yet this was moist and the cucumber went really well!

And a little bowl of  Sweet Potato fries with Mixed Berry Mayonnaise which tastes nothing like you think it’s going to and is really great!

For mains, we had another three dishes to try with a side of Egg fried rice with snow peas. The first dish we tried from the trio was the  Yuzu Salmon which was baked salmon with Japanese yuzu mayo sauce that was so good! I love it when salmon is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside and this was just that. I also has no idea that

Next up were the Choo Chee Prawns – Grilled prawns with a choo chee sauce which reminded me a little of satay sauce and I smothered my rice in it too as it was that good.

Lastly, we tried theTurkey Insal – We had no idea what this was going to be, but it was grilled turkey with a kalamsansi sauce, which is like a thicker soy sauce with a lot more flavour. The turkey, again, was moist, full of flavour and cooked so well. That’s certainly a huge compliment from me as I’m really not a big fan of turkey and I will only eat it at Christmas so I fit in with the family!

The desert was the only non-sharing item and it was lush! Walnut Chocolate Brownie with Clotted Cream & blood orange and star anise custard. I’ve never had flavoured custard before and this was a great way to try it!

We had had fantastic service all night, the waiters and waitresses were all so polite and we didn’t have to pour our wine once as they kept an eye on our glasses so we never went dry, I do love that in restaurants! The service was also really prompt which would make this the perfect lunch time spot too.

The venue itself really didn’t feel like it was in the back of a superstore on Oxford Street, it just felt like a normal restaurant. It was decked out in rose gold Christmas decorations that really suited the colour scheme of the venue.

Overal, we had a lovely evening and were pleasantly surprised with how they exceed our expecations!