Chinese food recently overtook Indian as the most popular takeaway in Britain and at last the common taste fell into line with my own. But I would go further than saying I prefer Chinese food to Indian, because I prefer Chinese food to every kind of food. Indeed, I prefer it to pretty much every kind of thing. I much prefer Chinese food to the ballet, for example, or to trousers. I much prefer Chinese food to football, cars, quilted toilet roll and Italy.

Chinese food is pretty much the best thing in the world. And there is no point eating anything else unless you have to for your job, like me. If I were not a restaurant critic I would eat only Chinese food. And if ever I am eating out for purely social reasons, I am always a bit sad if we opt for anything else.

Only the other day I was meeting a Times colleague who lives in Bayswater for a bit of supper, and for the couple of hours before I set off from North London we exchanged e-mails about where we might go – the new Italian, the posh bistro, the famous English place, the great Lebanese – and even as I drove over there I was pulling over every five minutes to send and receive texts about maybe the Russian gaff, what about a bit of sushi, the weird German place you like, then again maybe a burger… And although a full ten minutes went by when we were certain we were going to go to the Lebanese – Al Waha on Westbourne Grove, the best by some distance in all the land – my joy was unconfined when my phone went bleep again and I read (having pulled over), “F*** it, let’s have Chinese.”

I punched the air. I always punch the air when I’m going to have Chinese. Oh, the zip and ping and yabber of it. The puffs of steam, the golden crackle of fried pastry, the yelp of strong pork with a little ginger, the sour tickle of pink vinegar on a plump prawn dumpling, the slobber of greens, the shrill, demented cry of hoi sin sauce on cucumber and fatty duck. And to know that your friend craves it too, craves Chinese and only Chinese, means that you are as one, and there need be no talk when you rendezvous, only eating. We went to one or other of the fine establishments on Queensway that are rammed with scrawny Cantonese students stripping roasted ducks with the efficiency of cats, and extended families of blubbery Persian tweenagers poking gold-plated Nintendo DSs with pudgy fingers, and ate like gods.

But that was downtime. It’s not so often that a new Chinese worth the name comes around for review and when it does, I’m just cock-a-hoop. And I had double reason to be happy about Ba Shan because it is a second effort from the chaps (and very significant chapess) who brought us Bar Shu, the innovative and fiery Sichuan joint (currently being refurbished) on Frith Street.

This time, owner Shao Wei and adviser Fuchsia Dunlop have made a big song and dance in the pre-bumf about “small eats” or “xiao chi”, and were talking up the merits of cold meats and salads, dumplings, noodles, flatbreads and buns, freshly made each day by chefs newly arrived from Sichuan, Henan and Shaanxi, served with a bit of urgency and each item available only until the daily supply runs out.

This was thus doubly exciting, because one of the many things that makes Chinese the perfect food for me is my lack of patience. And the Chinese are the least patient people in the world. If you’ve ever been trampled to the ground at Kowloon harbour by hordes of tiny executives scrambling for the Hong Kong ferry, then you’ll know what I mean. To the casual Western stroller, fortuitously positioned at the front of the queue and looking forward to a seat in the bow with a good view of the bay, it comes as a bit of a surprise when the barrier goes up and they suddenly surge past, around and over you. They’ll knock you to the ground without a thought in their hurry to get to work, and then it’s like being unseated at the Canal Turn at Aintree, as they race over your body, weeny feet stomping on your ears as they sprint for the line.

But that’s the Cantonese. It’s why they invented the dim sum trolley: so you can walk into a restaurant and be eating within less than a minute (if the pudding trolley comes first then you start with pudding), and out again in five. It’s an experience you can replicate in London at a number of places, but more diverse regional options have been slow to arrive here, and more relaxed, generally, in their outlook. I had every hope that Ba Shan would provide a sharpish, dim sum-type experience with new and exciting titbits from the world’s greatest food nation, some, perhaps, that I had never encountered before. And I was in no way disappointed.

It’s not hectic though. Not at all. It is on a strangely quiet, calm Soho street corner on the site of what used to be an old-school Italian that I went to a few times in the Eighties but never liked much, and has been done out in the cool, dark, hardwoods of its sister, Bar Shu, with lots of straight edges, plain stools, angular nooks and crannies, softened with quiet Oriental arts-and-craftiness, hanging vegetables and shadow puppets. Ba Shan translates as “little Chinese town”, apparently, and I think this is meant to be a wee facsimile of one. Which is awfully cute, when you think about it I ordered widely and greedily, and the food came sequentially, at an easy pace. The most new and unusual for me were the Shaanxi flatbread sandwiches (jia mo): little flattish buns, quite sweet, filled with stewed pork or cumin-spiced beef, and presented wrapped in paper parcels, like tiny hamburgers. I’ve not seen a lot of Chinese bread (saving the bright white, spherical buns of Cantonese char siu pao) and they felt, in the mouth, faintly Mexican, although differently spiced and much more refined. A wonderful addition to my eating life.

I used to eat pot-stickers at the old ZenW3 (may she rest in peace) but they never seemed much more than a slightly frailer version of standard dumplings. Here (touted as Xi’an style, after the old Chinese capital, and translated as “guotie”) they displayed the sticky crispness on one flank of having genuinely stuck to a pot, the rest of the noodle case bright and light and steamy, and filled with very fragrant pork and chive and tender beef and celery.

Sichuan pork wonton in broth were perfect soupy dumplings, and then more familiar, pork and chive, prawn and water chestnut and chicken and mushroom dumplings came either with vinegar or spicy, garlicky sauce, so we had them all, with both. And they were spot on. Likewise the lotus-leaf buns (offered with similar fillings to the jia mo), the stir-fried baby pak choi and a dish of “fish-fragrant broad beans”.

My luck ran out, finally, and ironically, with a “good-luck egg roll with chicken and laver seaweed”, which looked pretty but tasted cold and rather sad.

There are plenty of noodles and rice dishes too, but that’s not really the point. The point is new and exciting stodge-packaged protein mouthfuls, friendly service, cute decor, mellow environment and a fresh new way to enjoy the most exciting food in the world.

Ba Shan

24 Romilly Street, London W1 (020-7287 3266)

Small eat: 8

Small town: 8

Small wonder: 8

Score: 8

Price: two can eat well, drinking tea, for £45.

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