Restaurant review: Quality Chinese restaurant Hou Hou Mei a welcome addition to impressive Inverness dining scene

By Jane Cumming

August 27 2022, 6:00 am

Hou Hou Mei offers top-class Chinese cuisine in Inverness. Pictures by Jason Hedges.

Inverness is blessed with great places to eat. For its size it boasts an inordinate number of restaurants many larger cities would be proud of. It also has a wide range of places from many culinary traditions.

I love it when friends from the big cities come here with their preconceived notions of how dire it is eating out in the provinces only to be blown away with what the capital of the Highlands has to offer.

But while Inverness has a number of decent Chinese takeaways, I have never found a really good sit-in which offers a taste of the Far East. Until now, that is.

Hou Hou Mei is located on Tomnahurich Street in the Highland capital.

Hou Hou Mei opened a few months ago on Tomnahurich Street and has been getting rave reviews from our friends who have visited.

I don’t know why it took us so long to get there but after our visit we were kicking ourselves for not having been sooner. It’s clearly popular as getting a space was not easy.

Hou Hou Mei

Inside it looks nothing like your average Chinese restaurant, more like a modern European cafe.

With a trendy looking bar with all the paraphernalia for cocktail making, wooden tables and leather dining chairs, distressed painted wooden panelling and some bold feature wallpaper, it is bang on trend.

When we arrived the place was buzzing with excited diners and there was a really lively and happy vibe about the place.

We were going to the theatre afterwards so this was early evening and in mid-week.

Recently we have been used to many restaurants being half full, or worse, closed, so this was great to see.

The menu also looked different to the usual Chinese restaurant fare. There were not the dozens of dishes offering the usual mix of chop suey, chow mein and char siu dishes.

It is a much more restrained and select offer – and for me that was a plus. It promised the kitchen would be taking care to craft each dish and that got us very excited.

The food

We took the restaurant’s advice and ordered a selection of starters and mains to share.

The bao char sui pork belly was fabulous. Sticky and deliciously savoury, every mouthful came with a sliver of tender pork coated in melt-in-the-mouth fat (that makes pork belly such a delight) cushioned in a fluffy steamed bun. The garnish of pickle cut through the pork wonderfully.

The eye-catching bao char sui pork belly was a delicious starter.

Our other starter was the aromatic duck spring rolls. Aromatic duck is one of my favourites and I was hoping there would be sufficient duck in the dish and it would not be a spring roll packed with vegetables and little meat.

I needn’t have worried. It was full of succulent duck bathed in a gorgeous hoisin sauce and just enough spring onion and carrot to add some texture and sweetness.

The aromatic duck spring rolls had a good ratio of vegetables to meat.

This duo of starters certainly had us really looking forward to our main course.

I had chosen paw paw chicken curry. The chicken was cooked in a perfectly crispy panko crumb that added texture to the dish. The curry itself was spicy with a real depth of flavour which was a million miles from those tubs of Chinese curry sauce you can get in chip shops.

It was complex, aromatic, silky and so delicious.

Again the acidity from the pickled slaw gave a perfect contrast to the richness of the rest of the dish.

With delicately flavoured jasmine rice to mop up all that delicious sauce it was fantastic.

The beautifully presented paw paw chicken curry.

My partner had chosen the sweet shredded chilli chicken. It too was a masterpiece of contrasting flavours and textures.

I did manage to wrestle a forkful from them and can confirm it was a perfectly cooked and presented dish. One I would certainly choose myself next time.

The sweet shredded chilli chicken was described as a “masterpiece”.

I am delighted to say there were no pineapple or banana fritters on offer for dessert. Instead there were four beautiful sounding dishes ranging from an Asian pear sticky toffee pudding to a miso salted caramel brownie.

But I plumped for the sticky coconut rice pudding with chilli glazed pineapple and a mango compote. It was fabulous.

Just like the rice pudding with jam my mum used to make but 100 times more sophisticated and, sorry mum, better.

My partner chose the yuzu, white chocolate and ginger cheesecake and confirmed it was wonderful. So good in fact they guarded it jealously to prevent me getting a bite.

The yuzu, white chocolate and ginger cheesecake was wonderful.

The verdict

Hou Hou Mei is a brilliant addition to Inverness’s restaurant scene.

What a joy to have a classy and supremely competent Chinese restaurant on our doorstep.

I would recommend it to anyone who loves the flavours of the east but is looking for high-quality food, beautifully prepared and presented.

We will be back – if we can get a booking!

Jane Cumming is an avid foodie who loves eating out with friends and family. Originally a journalist, she’s worked in PR for many years and loves nothing more than travelling around the region to seek out new places to eat and drink.

Jane is a partner in a PR company, and is a director in two family-owned tourism businesses in Beauly. One runs self-catering apartments and the other offers events which combine local food and drink with tales of Scottish culture and history.