Pagoda Court Restaurant

Press, 8 September 1982, Page 18

Pagoda Court Restaurant

679 Colombo Street Phone 63-931 Licensed

A. K. GRANT)

Chinese restaurants in Christchurch are mushrooming, which is the appropriate verb, given the importance of the mushroom in Chinese cuisirie. although I suppose one could with equal validity say that they are sprouting. Anyway there are quite a lot of them, and one of the newest is the Pagoda Court. It is well situated, in the stretch of Colombo Street between Hereford and Cashel Streets.

It is large, it has a bar, and it has been pleasantly decorated and furnished in a style which reflects, as one would expect, Oriental themes. (Kenny Ball’s version of “55 Days to Peking” was an Oriental theme, but that is not the sort of Orien-

tai theme I am talking about). Being so handily situated, the Pagoda Court is a good place to have lunch, and my wife and I took our daughters there for this purpose, recently.

The service was attentive and, indeed, rather better than that — it was obliging. The girls are very keen on noodles (I think they get it from their mother) out noodles were not listed as a separate item on the menu. However, a bowl of them was cheerfully furnished when it was asked for.

This willingness to oblige children and to regard the menu as not necessarily carved on tablets of stone is a very positive point in the Pagoda Court’s favour.

The menu itself, however, is the only aspect of the pagoda Court that I would wish to criticise: it appears to be a photocopied sheet pasted into a stiff folder; it is a single sheet only, and the dishes are named but not described. Part of what you pay for in a licensed restaurant is atmosphere and the form of the menu can play an important part in establishing that atmosphere. Also, it is fun to read about what you are going to eat. The proprietors of the Pagoda Court have obviously spent a lot of money to make the place look pleasant, and it seems a pity to detract from the agreeable effect created by the aforementioned decoration and furnishings with a menu to which not much thought has been given. The deficiencies of the menu as a document, however, are to a large extent compensated for by the quality of the food listed on it. We ordered far more than we could eat — greed, as it so often does, triumphing over experience.

The principal dishes were a sweet and sour pork with pineapple; chicken with seasonal vegetables, and braised steak with bamboo shoots. I don’t know what sort of equipment you need for a bamboo shoot, how you actually go about shooting bamboo, what the bamboo does

when it is cornered, but anyway they have got bamboo shoots down to a fine art at the Pagoda Court. The chicken with seasonal vegetables was delightful, because of the superb way in which the Chinese cook vegetables. In New Zealand, our approach to vegetables used to be to boil the hell out ol them, and “Eat your vegetables!” was a dismal command to fall upon a child's ear. We have the Chinese largely to thank for the fact that this is no longer the case.

.If I'had eaten any more of the sweet and sour pork with pineapple I would have had to be helped out of my chair. And the fried rice in the side bowls was of admirable flavour and consistency, neither dessicated nor fused into a sticky, solid lump.

The main dishes were $6.50 each, the bowls of fried rice were $2.20 each and a bottle of Australian Chablis was $l3. The sensitive yet forthright individualism of the Chablis was an admirable foil for the collective wisdom embodied in the Chinese cookery, the food speaking to one in the accents of Confucius, and the Chablis in the accents of Barry Humphries. The Pagoda Court can be recommended. And not only CAN it be recommended, but dammit, I WILL recommend it!