Shunning the well-trodden standard-issue freebies which grace the tables of Chinese restaurants (braised groundnuts, Sichuan kiam chye, artless attempts at achar), Silk Road proffers a dish of alien apostasy and faerie-delicacie; a finely-brined and nicely-diced mirepoix of tantalisingly toothy vegetables, steeped in a secret, seductive potion; cavorting coyly with the tastebuds, a temptress feisty and forthright, voluptuous and vitalising.

XLB plump and meaty, strong on the ginger, beautifully clammy-skinned, but on the whole still lacking the incendiary succulence of CJLMXLB's rendition (although, on occasion, one wishes that the latter were a little less floppy, poodle-eared, Persistence-Of-Memory Daliquescent). But the divinest dumpling was definitely the "Snowflake" Jiaozi, briefly browned, lewdly lubricated, stuffed with pork, jiu3 cai4 and an inspired whiff of aniseed/liquorice/Pernod. And on top of them rested an ethereal popiah-skin-"snowflake", tenuous and tremulous: a virginal veil of pre-nuptial modesty, or naughty edible lingerie to encourage gastronomic foreplay? Never were the "pleasures of the table" so archly ceremonious...