Review of Silk Road in Heacham: Extensive menus, delicious food and super friendly staff at Chinese restaurant
We’ve brought our Eat My Words food reviews back - and I was excited to kickstart them with a first visit to a delicious Chinese restaurant.
After becoming vegan - or choosing to follow any dietary preference or needing to follow a certain diet - you notice that quite quickly, your options when eating out at restaurants can diminish quite severely.
This is all part and parcel of having such a lifestyle - and has meant that, often, I might not think about Chinese as an option for dinner as I would usually consider it to be fairly meat and dairy-centric.
But this has all changed thanks to Silk Road in Heacham. A few months ago, I saw a post in a Facebook group sharing the restaurant’s extensive vegan menu and was super excited to give it a try.
So, when two of my friends - who are both also vegan - said they would be around for a catch-up last week, I knew where to suggest we visit.
Ashleigh and John brought their beautiful 10-month-old Aurora along for the meal with my partner Lee and I, and we were instantly impressed.
Upon walking into Silk Road - through a small shop at the front - the restaurant was clean, spacious and colourful with a mixture of traditional Chinese decorations - including an impressive mural - and modern touches.
It was a Thursday evening and while it wasn’t overwhelmingly busy, there were a few other tables enjoying their meals too.
After settling in and having a brief catch-up, we ordered drinks. John chose a pint of Tiger beer and Lee a pint of Tsingtao for £6.50 each (they reordered the same drinks later on) and Ashleigh and I both went for a pint of coke (£3.80 each - Ashleigh ordered another later on too).
These were fresh and were good accompaniments for our meals - and the drinks menu was fairly comprehensive. There was something for everyone.
Moving on to starters - we were impressed by how much choice there was on the vegan menu (in addition to a regular menu and a gluten-free one).
With a turntable allowing us to easily share, we decided to pick out multiple dishes we could all try.
We went for crispy seaweed (£5.80), deep fried aubergine with Thai sweet chilli sauce (£7.20), fried vegetarian dumplings (£5.50), vegetarian pancake wraps with hoisin sauce (£5) and two lots of salt and pepper chips (£5 each). We also were given complimentary prawn crackers which Aurora enjoyed tucking into.
These were a brilliant start to our meal - everything was fresh, piping hot and full of flavour.
The salt and pepper chips, dumplings and aubergine were highlights of the starters - all were cooked to perfection and seasoned really well.
The crispy seaweed was delicious and the pancake wraps were really nice too, but it’s worth noting that these do not come with an alternative filling to the duck on the regular menu.
Moving on to mains - and we were already starting to feel fairly full but this did not stop us from ordering a good selection again.
We opted for tofu with green pepper in black bean sauce (£8), crispy Quorn nuggets in sweet and sour sauce (£8), mixed vegetable chow mein (£8.20), stir fried pak choi with garlic and vegetarian oyster sauce (£6.20) and boiled rice (£3.80).
Lee - the only meat-eater in the group - also chose flaming chicken (£10.80) from the standard menu. This came to the table and was literally set alight for a minute which is always exciting! He said this was a definite stand-out dish for him which was “succulent” and had a mild heat to it.
We all loved the nuggets which were a great alternative for fans of sweet and sour chicken balls, while the chow mein, tofu and pak choi were all just as fresh as the other dishes and added to a good variety of Chinese cuisine for us to sample.
John gave a special mention to the tofu which he said had been made really well as sometimes it can be watery but this was far from it and was really flavoursome.
We must also give a shoutout to the super friendly staff who were so brilliant with Aurora and even took her off of us (with her parents’ permission) and entertained her while we were eating our mains.
Our total bill came to £127.50 which is definitely on the more expensive side but considering how much food we ordered (we were very excited by the vegan menu, as I said), the quality and quantity of it, we did not feel hard done by.
We would definitely return for another visit to explore the menu even further.
Ratings out of five:
Food: We were so impressed with how many vegan (and gluten-free) options there were alongside the standard menu. The food was flavoursome, fresh and of really good quality. ****
Drink: There was a good selection and the drinks tasted fresh. The cost of the beer was not extortionate but it did bump the overall price of the meal up a fair amount. ****
Decor: It was an extremely colourful space with a mix of traditional Chinese decorations and modern touches. The restaurant also has a shop attached to it featuring cushions among other items for sale. ****
Staff: They were among the friendliest staff I have ever encountered who seemed enthusiastic and passionate - they even offered to look after Aurora while we were eating our mains. *****
Price: It was not at the cheaper end of the scale but we had good-sized portions and plenty to go around. For the amount of food and drink we had, £32 per person was fair - with £26 of the total on four beers and £11.60 for the service charge. ****