It was a golden age, when a nondescript piece of suburbia became a dim sum destination that families embraced and a community took to its heart. Its glory was all too brief but beautiful.

Wherever there’s a station, there’s a Station Road; an unassuming stretch lined with minicab hatches, takeaways and newsagents - collected together through expedience rather than design. Station Roads don’t have their moment. They are the thoroughfare, never the destination.

Station Road in Harrow didn’t service a picturesque village like Pinner, nor the eminent community on-the-Hill. It was the necessary route from Tesco to Gayton library to Debenhams, which my mother and father – first-generation Chinese from Malaysia and Hong Kong respectively, took in their Volkswagen Derby every week. On this stretch, one Chinese restaurant stood (and, it seemed, had always stood). The Taste of China, with its regal red sign, was far too refined for the likes of us. It was the sort of place, we assumed, that had knives and forks on the table instead of chopsticks. 

Over-ordering was rife: the sign of a generous host. Crammed tables bowed under the towers of stacked bamboo baskets filled with small steamed things: bite-sized pieces of spare ribs, shiny in black bean sauce; pleated translucent prawn dumplings; parcels of sticky rice and chicken wrapped in lotus leaves. Plates flew out of the kitchen laden with slabs of taro cake studded with auburn nibs of Chinese sausage, and crisp golden digits of squid ready to be snatched rapaciously and dipped in the alarming gloop of red sauce. It was unthinkable that the post-lunch tablecloth would be anything other than patchworked with the stains of tea and chilli.

Golden Palace was the scene of many milestones: it was where A-Level results were celebrated, where boyfriends were taken to meet the family and watched closely (or laughed at) as they were proffered duck’s tongues and chicken’s feet. We took comfort in the weekly gossip that was swapped over a soundtrack of chopsticks clacking in hungry fervour. Where else would grannies have char siu bao placed on their plates by begrudging but respectful iPod-wielding grandsons? Where else would aunties get together and "wah!" affectionately at how tall you were, pale you were, fat you were? These were signs of love, signs of family. And as I grew, so did the restaurant. The queues were longer. The restaurant doubled then tripled in size. The flowers that framed the entrance – once modest arrangements of orchids – became something worthy of Elton John’s living room.