A taste of Guizhou at Christmas?

The Worker’s Stadium branch of Three Guizhou Men used to be my old haunt. The food is exquisitely spicy with quality ingredients ensuring staples such as handmade noodles and fried rice caress the stomach while crowd-pleasing specialities like suantangyu stimulate the salivary glands with their sour tang each time a waitress ladles out another bowl.

Their zhaopai naicha used to be my favourite kind of milk tea offering a warm spicy take on the southern drink to ward off the cold and invigorate the senses ahead of a hard day of Christmas shopping.

The only reason I stopped dining there was a change of chefs that saw the good man responsible for my many happy slurpings leaving for places unknown. Now I opt for Cantonese milk tea from nearby Bellagio. It’s an extremely pleasant vehicle for a caffeine buzz with the added bonus of evacuative properties. “It makes me shit,” as my Chinese dining companion put it.

But a few changes have taken place since the heydays of my Guizhou idyll that do not please me.

There’s a lot of unnecessary decoration now with rather too many large plants for waitresses to hide behind.

What used to be decent music has been replaced by sub-Backstreet crooning setting the teeth on edge. I navigated my way through the foliage to ask the bar staff for a respite – they did, but I’m sure the bletch would have started up again the moment more diners arrived.

In fact, the meet-and-greet looked rather seasonal, her traditional Guizhou bauble festoon jingle-jangling with festive promise. I’m sure their ginger chicken dipped in soy sauce would still be a valid winter option and a plate of gongbao jiding so tasty you’ll forget to feel crashingly gauche for ordering it.

But the devil’s in the details. What used to be a slick, open-plan dining area for quick, efficient eating has become cluttered. The whole ambience of a modern, sophisticated hangout destroyed by a lazy, or extremely miscalculated, choice of background music.

There are several branches of Three Guizhou Men throughout the city. I hope the management at other outlets have more foresight than to put their quality product in peril at a time of tightening purse-strings.