Despite eating their meals back to front, JOSEPH HOOK and his wife find lots to like at Japanese restaurant

Rendezvous Express

188-189 Victoria Rd, Swindon SN1 3DF

http://www.rendezvous.uk.net/rendezvous-express.html

Parking: short-term free parking outside, public car parks nearby

Disabled access: yes

Adver ratings

Food: 7

Choice: 8

Décor: 6

Customer service: 9

TripAdvisor rating: 5

THERE is only really one kind of food you need on a late British summer evening, as the weather turns to the kind of cold, grey drizzle you can look forward to for the foreseeable future: a takeaway.

Which is, more or less, what Rendez-vous Express do. In fact, it is exactly what they do, but given that I was writing a restaurant review, I picked up the wife and headed down for a more immersive experience. It’s only a short, gravity-assisted stroll down Victoria Road from the Adver offices, so this wasn’t too tasking.

The menu is largely Japanese food, with the Chinese elements, mostly starters, apparently a relatively recent addition to their offering. We ordered a selection from both countries.

Dim sum is, I’m relatively confident, one of the nicest food stuffs in the world, and very in-keeping with our desire for solid, warming fare. The sight of a dim sum platter (£12.20) on offer, then, was welcome.

Despite being listed as a starter, it took 20 minutes to prepare – so we were given the option to either wait, or have our food as it was ready. Naturally, we chose to eat now.

So, in the meantime, we ordered our main courses: duck ramen (£10.20) for me, and grilled teriyaki salmon (£10.95) for the wife. We chucked in sides of kimchi (£1) and eel nigiri (£3.60) for good measure.

It was only a short wait for the food to arrive: made longer by a series of stripped-down pop songs, including a particularly insufferable cover of Tina Turner’s What’s Love Got To Do With It, but with the edge taken off by my cold Tsing Tao beer (£3.20), while the wife ordered a more cosy green tea.

Meanwhile, the décor inside is clean, professional, maybe a little soulless. Some Asian artwork makes the effort to transport you away a little, but the large windows and the appearance of unexpectedly beautiful sunset was more effective. Not sure how much of the credit for that can go to the establishment, but it was appreciated all the same.

The food was plentiful, and it was readily apparent why the waiter had given us a surprised look when we ordered as much as we did. Mains came first, and my duck ramen was nourishing: the duck breast was cooked beautifully, lightly breaded, but a slightly odd addition to the milkier-than-I-expected broth.

The various other goodies floating around in there were more expected and very complimentary: a somehow both slimy and crispy seaweed, half a boiled egg with a yoke just how they should be (the kind of soft you get in a very well-made scotch egg), sweetcorn, spring onion and red onion. Altogether refreshing and full of flavour.

The closest thing to a criticism I’d have would be the noodles: I like mine a little more substantial, and these were slightly closer to the 7p noodle packs I lived off after leaving home.

The wife had done better: her salmon was cooked perfectly. Not at all dry, with a crispy skin and just the right amount of teriyaki to flavour but not overbear, it was fantastic. With a sticky rice and some crisp, fresh vegetables, it made a near-perfect plate.

The sides weren’t bad either: the eel nigiri was an adventurous choice, but in the end, maybe not as unusual as we hoped – which isn’t to say it wasn’t nice. The kimchi was bursting with flavour, and mild at first, before a second mouthful rapidly became extremely hot.

Just as we were fighting our way to the end of the mains, the starters arrived, and there were a lot of them: you could genuinely have had a decent lunch for two from the dim sum platter alone.

We approached them methodically: a pork Char Siu (steamed bun-style) dim sum each to start. Slightly odd, fluffy yet stodgy, but the filling was strong: chunky bits of pork in a reasonable amount of spice.

Next were the prawn dumplings – the kind of thing that can’t be bad, but, as the wife remarked, “could have been prawnier”. A bold choice next, as we picked beef before pork, and they were very good – they couldn’t have been much beefier.

But it was the right call to leave the pork dumpling to last, being, as they were, the best part of the meal. They were spiced gorgeously, perfectly complimented by the sweet chili dip, and with a coarse, meaty filling.

And with that, having battled through an unreasonable amount of food for one sitting, we were done. A Japanese / Chinese hybrid meal which offered exactly the right kind of antidote to a typically English evening.