I read about this place in a magazine and decided that my top priority for the weekend (it was a quiet one a few weeks back) was to own one of these woks.

The woks are unusual in that they are made the old way, hand beaten with hammers (as opposed to modern ones which are just pressed in a machine), I’m a sucker for things like this, they’re very nice though, a web of indentations in the pan show every hammer strike as the craftsman transformed the flat piece of iron into the woks you buy.

Apparently the shop is run by two brothers who are the last in the line (their kids are in college and will not take up the hammer) and who’s fingers are covered in bandages. As H argued over the price with him he showed us an impressive array of business cards from his clients, some of the top restaurants in town, their woks are very well respected and can be expected to last for 20 years or more if treated correctly.

Wok preparation – you can’t just treat these woks like a normal frying pan (use it and then just throw it in the sink for the ayi to sort out the next day), they need to be seasoned before you use them to get that black coating you see in restaurants etc and they should never see soap or a scouring pad (or it will need to be re-seasoned), to clean you basically dump water in at the end of cooking, wait for it to boil and then scrub with something gentle, preferably a bamboo brush or plastic scourer. Anyway, plenty of articles about this on the web you should read before using.