Yauatcha. Yau-atcha. Yau-at-cha. I have to admit, I didn’t think twice about the name, apart from wondering about the pronunciation, but when Mr C asked me if I knew what it meant, the answer seemed obvious.  Apart from the fact his explanation was less plausible than the one I just found googling. Yauatcha was created (is owned?) by Alan Yau, the man behind Wagamama and Hakkasan. So, Mr C explained that Yau-atcha, meant something like Alan Yau, right at you (at-cha = at you), which I thought made sense in a kind of egotistical way. However, my friend google explained that as Yauatcha is a dim sum/tea house/patisserie, the Yau-at-cha (tea) is a much more feasible explanation.

The decor is pretty stunning, with about a 25ft long aquarium underneath the bar and a star effect ceiling, plus a lattice of what looked like fat plus signs in the wall with candles in each. Very trendy, very chic and somewhere you almost feel you’re not cool enough to be in. A feeling amplified when two very attractive young women sat next to us.

Some time has obviously been spent on the cocktail list and my Maha Sumu, a combination of Zubrowka vodka, kiwi and liquorice wasn’t bad at all. Mr C’s Kumquatcha, mainly kumquats and cachaca, if I remember correctly, was certainly easier to drink; disguising several shots of spirits to taste like a soft drink always goes down well in my book.

The menu is a mix of dim sum and mains dishes, so you can go for a bunch of small dishes or have a couple of dim sum as starters and then order a main dish each, which is pretty much the way we went.

The Prawn and Pork dumpling was good, the Shiitake and Duck roll, better, and the Salt & Pepper Squid the best of our first round of offerings. Whilst I did really like the former two, I’m not entirely sure if they were better than some of the decent dim sum I’ve had in Gerrard St or Royal China, but the Squid was only a percentage point or two off perfection.

The mains of Szechuan Beef and XO Prawn with a side offering of Shimeiji noodles were again very good, but for me, lacked a bit of pizazz. I’d quite happily chomp through all three again, but was hoping for something a bit more fantastic from a Michelin starred establishment.

At this point, Mr C and I had ascertained that the attractive young ladies were in fact WAGS and friendly ones at that (although I have to admit that I made a rather unfair assumption of whom they might be when they initiated conversation between the two tables, us being suited & booted, middle-ish aged guys and them being part of the beautiful people set), so we were happy to continue to sip at our beers despite passing on dessert. Unfortunately, the cosiness of the tables or perhaps my clumsiness, or even the fact they were talking about football, led to me kicking one of the Wags in the calf and stepping on the other one’s foot, whilst I struggled to extricate myself from my seat. You can take the man out of central defence but you can’t take the central defender out of the man. Or something like that.

Yauatcha is a fantastic looking restaurant that serves pretty good food. The price of the food isn’t at all bad either, with the bill coming out at £50 per head, which I think is excellent for a Michelin starred restaurant at dinner time. I didn’t get any life changing moments eating the food, but there’s plenty of stuff on the menu that would tempt me back and that’s not even considering the interesting looking list of teas they have. If you want to look (and even be spoken to, perhaps) by beautiful people, then this is definitely not one to miss, but the food, cocktails and decor also make it worthy of a visit.