Fresh Feast, Charles St, Cardiff: Chinese restaurant review

On November 9, 2025 by The Plate Licked Clean

There’s a wall-mounted touch screen in this most orange of rooms. It’s there for anyone to walk in and order a takeaway. If that sounds novel, wait until you settle at your table and send your order, from the tablet provided, to your server standing a few feet away.

Open for just over a month here on Charles St, Fresh Feast’s website makes great play of their ‘blending authentic Sichuan flavors (sic) with British dining preferences [in] a Pan-Asian feast perfect for sharing—with options for both spicy and non-spicy tastes.’

It’s not exactly The South Kitchen, is it, says my friend, namechecking the city’s smallest menu and its beautifully binary ‘Chicken or lamb?’

It certainly isn’t.

I count 288 options on the delivery menu, though you are welcome to waste your life proving me wrong. The impression is of a scattergun approach to the region, with Thailand and Korea vying for attention with Singapore and regions of China. The online version of the eat-in menu throws up its own oddities. Much of it is priced at ‘£0’, and there will be various things to irk and disappoint, but let’s talk about the good stuff first.

The pork belly- let’s talk about that, the ‘red roast master stock pork belly’. It comes in one piece, and you will be offered scissors.

Take these secateurs- unless you enjoy having your food cut up for you like mummy’s special little soldier- and get to work, because this is something to linger over. It’s impressive meat cookery, faultlessly tender in that glossy, tangy sauce, and it makes a lot of impact for £16.80.

Over three visits, it will be the highlight.

To the Sichuan section, where my hopes of finding my default order- lamb bristling with cumin- are dashed. Shame. Stir fried beef (£16.90) is unashamedly hefty, a broadside of whole red and green chillies, seeds and all; and if the beef itself is a little anonymous, there’s no denying the liberal hand with the garlic and ginger and the ferocious heat. It’s a bracing plate of food.

Squares of pork belly (£14.90) in a sweetish sauce come with knots of fried dough, which bring some snap to some more exemplary braising. It’s an odd textural contrast. I’m unsure whether these mahua twists are a traditional thing with meat, but I can imagine this one dividing opinion. I file the dense breadiness in the ‘tried it once’ column.

Other dishes are less successful.

Dumplings. A ‘curated’ (if there’s a bigger red flag in foodspeak, let me know) mix of five dumplings. Oh, and while I’m feeling mardy- perhaps it’s time to stop calling food served in odd numbers ‘Perfect for sharing’. Yes, we understand the visual appeal argument. We understand basic division, too.

Here’s the problem with ordering from a tablet with glossy photos of your food: you invite comparison. You demand it. And these colours on the plate are far less vivid than in the app, and if the colours are muted, so are the flavours. None make much of an impression, with the exception of the sweet prawn and chives. They are well cooked, steamed then fried, but I’m struggling to tell you any more.

As I write this, I check my notes for inspiration. I find one word. ‘Unremarkable’.

Worse is what is billed as ‘Korean fried chicken’. It lacks almost everything that makes it one of the world’s great fried chicken dishes. There is none of that fragile batter, none of that shattering crunch, no deep red sauce. I’ve done better in my own kitchen, using a simple dredge on thumb-thick pieces of thigh,

Whether your favourite version uses a mixture of cornflour and potato starch, or even a touch of plain flour and baking powder (see Felicity Cloake’s ‘Perfect’ survey of best of the best) it won’t look like these anonymous pieces of flesh in breadcrumbs. With many pieces verging on overcooked, and the sauce a burnt orange (it’s nicely spiced and lingers, though) the plate bears little resemblance to its alleged sesame-flecked likeness on the tablet display. In case you were still wondering, it’s a huge disappointment: it’s my daughter’s first time with one of my favourite things to eat. I almost feel like apologising to her.

Lamb skewers have been liberally pelted with a dry spice mix at ‘classic kick’ level (£7.99, pick anything from ‘zero heat’ to ‘extra hot’) but one or two are overcooked and tough. It’s easily done when the pieces are this small, I suppose.

Bypassing the smashed cucumber (for £8.80, which is going some), I make sure they have confirmed my order of their giant soup dumpling (£7.90) as I’ve had a timely message, received when we are en route and minutes away, from an Instagram contact who has had a disappointing experience.

‘They did not give us what we ordered, they gave us shen jian bao [pork stuffed buns] instead of xiao long bao.’

Overlooking for a moment the fact my contact is Malaysian, and the kitchen might be expected to think she might know the difference, what arrives isn’t quite the dish described. There is no sign of the straws mentioned on the menu, or the ginger vinegar, but they’d be redundant anyway: the filling has already leaked into the bowl, leaving the dumpling squatting in a rich, meaty broth pearled with fat. It is generously stuffed with well-seasoned pork and scallions. It tastes good. But it’s not the experience it’s meant to be.

A mixed bag, then. Fresh Feast intrigues and disappoints. A bloated menu, an unnecessarily alienated ordering process, and uneven execution. Three meals, some peaks and troughs, and what I think is a measured take on the place.

But I hear they’re inviting social media types in. So remember, kids, in the context of ‘invite’ culture and free meals traded for glowing reviews, other opinions will be available.

46-48 Charles St, Cardiff CF10 2GE

https://www.freshfeast.co.uk/

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