Tiny Chinese restaurant gets into Brum’s first 11
Wok Chi has plenty of satisfied customers according to reviews. GRAHAM YOUNG reports
WOK Chi has barely been open for two years but the Harborne eatery with just 16 covers is already listed as the 11th best restaurant in Birmingham on TripAdvisor. And that makes it, by some distance, the top-ranked Chinese restaurant, too, with big hitters on the city’s burgeoning scene such as Purnell’s, Opheem and The Wilderness also trailing.
Born in the 1974 Year of the Tiger, Alfie Choi launched the Wok Chi concept with his wife Linda. Their success is the realisation of a dream that has has been driven by sheer hard work.
The restaurant has an open-plan ‘theatre’ style kitchen.
Alfie says: “A lot of Chinese takeaway food used to be very gloopy and the people running takeaways didn’t have a food background.
“Our open kitchen is all about transparency and that gives people confidence about what they are eating. Being clean and bright eradicates those doubts.”
Wok Chi’s menu includes Chinese and South East Asian dishes and ingredients are organic where possible.
Alfie is first-generation Chinese Hong Kong and with Linda has two sons, Ollie, 11, and Joshie, 9.
Alfie’s grandfather brought his own young son Peter over to Britain in the early 1960s.
Peter learned the business ethos and ran ‘‘a few restaurants and takeaways’’, working everywhere from Manchester’s Chinatown to Northern Ireland and Germany, which meant young Alfie was often being brought up by his grandmother.
“I grew up telling myself I would never go into the takeaway world,” smiles Alfie. “I did a business degree with finance.
“And then I discovered I did not enjoy working from nine to five.”
Alfie began to run a small chain of generic takeaways in Shropshire from 1997 and sold up five years later. He took on a buffet restaurant in partnership and things were going well until the recession.
Alfie finished that in 2013 and then took 18 months off while he looked for the right place to start again. Wok Chi replaced a Chinese takeaway called Splendour which had had two families running it across half a century.
The building was not in good repair and it took four months to refurbish instead of the planned six weeks. “It was dilapidated and we had to do the drainage and everything, but we wanted it to be perfect.”
Alfie’s working day can last anywhere from 12 to even 18 hours because if something needs to 1. Adam’s, Waterloo Street
2. Old Dresser Cafe, Smethwick 3. Grand Central Kitchen, Stephenson Street
4. Rustic Table, Harborne 5. MyLahore, Bradford Street 6. Royal Watan Kashmiri Restaurant, Pershore Road
7. Tapas Revolution, Grand Central 8. Revolution, Broad Street 9. Sapore, Coventry Road
10. Harborne Kitchen, Harborne be done, he does it.
“You get out what you put in,” he smiles. “This is not a 9-5 job and I’ve grown up with that work ethic,” he says. “We’ve never used babysitters, so our children have grown up in a working environment so they won’t take anything for granted.
“We were going to be just a takeaway but decided to put some covers in and sitting down has taken off far better than expected – full tables are our showroom, the catalyst for how the business has grown.
“We are not really aiming at Chinese students – they prefer Selly Oak or Chinatown – because we have a more local, Western demographic.’’
Wok Chi’s chefs have been in the UK for 20-30 years so Alfie says their skills have been “honed by the Western market’’.
“I am not a trained chef, just a jack-of-alltrades. But I can run a kitchen, cook if I need to and look after quality control.’’
Popular meals include salt and chilli squid, steamed summer rolls (Vietnamese), lemongrass chicken, Singapore-style vermicelli and seafood udon. But some of its most regular customers are vegans.
Alfie says: “The trend has been very positive for us. We use tofu in vegetarian stir fries because it’s very versatile. Buddhists and Taoists have a meat-free diet so it’s not a brand new concept, more of a lifestyle choice.”
The takeaway / diner is ranked 11 out of 1963 restaurants in Birmingham and 149 of the 169 reviews posted have rated it ‘‘excellent’’. With another 14 saying it is ‘‘very good’’ that just leaves seven reviewers less than delighted.