Royal China Restaurant, Docklands, London

Came here for dim-sun. Not the best, but not the worse, and it’s in a good location for a walk towards to old pubs in old Limehouse or to Canary Wharf…Filled a hole anyways…

For photos, please go to http://chopstix2steaknives.blogspot.com/2011/07/royal-chi...

There aren’t many places to go to around the Canary Wharf area if you are looking for Chinese food. Royal China is the most prominent one that is located at Westferry Circus.

I came here for dinner a while ago before they had a refurbishment.

Pan fried stuffed eggplant with minced shrimp in black bean sauce £9.8

Eggplant cooked until it was soft and soaking in the black bean sauce. This had a slight spicy kick to it.

Mixed seafood stir fried with fresh milk £14.80

When I saw this on the menu, I Just HAD to order it. I mean stir fried fresh milk? The dish came out in a blanket of fluffy snow interspersed with seafood. The texture was like the filling in egg tarts with hints of sweet coconut if I’m not mistaken. I really enjoyed this.

Squid with garlic and chilli £11.50

This was unmemorable.
Overall dinner was satisfying though the prices here are a little more on the £££ side.

On another occasion, I came back during the May long weekend for some dim sum with friends. Usually this wouldn’t be my first pick but they were having a promotion for the month of May with 25% off.

With a large table, we got down to ordering and they have some new items introduced into the menu. Where do I begin? Having had dim sum here in the past, I always thought it was respectable if not ever a tad expensive for the quality.

Let’s start with the newcomers.

Underwhelmingly disappointing. The fish dumplings were over steamed and dry. The taro cake was slices of taro that were pressed together but doesn’t gel as it should like a turnip cake and lacked any taste. The green tea sponge cake? There are no words.

Back to the regulars, the quality and standard were inconsistent with some being good and others disappointing. Compared to my previous visits, there is a distinct drop in quality.

We finished the dim sum with dessert with one of the party ordering the sago cream with yam and the rest had the sweet dumplings.

Desserts itself took over half an hour to arrive and having made these sweet dumplings before, it doesn’t take half an hour. When it arrived, I was so disappointed that I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. The dumpling had a crackling texture instead of being chewy and QQ; the soup did not even have any hint of ginger!

Having spent that long waiting for our dessert, it was another 20 minutes for our bill to arrive. With a young child in tow, you bet the little boy was pretty restless by this stage. We finally went to the counter to pay our bill and to our surprise, there was no discount. We queried with the lady who served us and the answer we got was the bill is generated via a machine that is maintained by head office and it seems that head office had excluded the discount from the machine and sales today. Lady, how difficult is it to whip out a calculator and manually write or deduct the discount if your machine is malfunctioning?

I don’t know about you but when I am greeted by this discount advert sign when walking through canary wharf after the dim sum with no discount, bad service and disappointing food, something is seriously wrong and disappointing here. Misleading advertising is what I will begin with.

My dimsum experiences are varied. Yuautcha is at the very top end of the scale (still the best I've ever had in my life, and indeed one of the best meals), Ping Pong is at the bottom. I hate Ping Pong. In the middle? Nothing. Except my cooking from scratch because I happen to live over the road from a Chinese supermarket.

Royal China is placed somewhere happily in the middle. Sunday lunch meant that the restaurant (apparently newly refurbished) was full of Chinese families all tucking in to little parcels and lots of noodles. As with most dimsummeries, it's very child-friendly and there's prams and high chairs all over the shop (in an accommodating way, not in a yummy mummy kind of way).

But Sunday lunch meant a 20 minute wait. And it was totally worth it. There was three of us, which for the most part meant ordering was successful. No one dish stood out, they were all really very good. Scallop dumplings probably my favourite. Specials aren't much pricier than the usual dishes (and actually, I didn't think they were any better or most interesting). Tea is cheap, staff are friendly.

We could have happily ordered more than our three dishes each (actually, we did happily order more) so 12 dishes, plus tea came to a healthy £50 in total. I'm impressed. I'm now on the hunt for ALLTHEDIMDUMINLONDON, but I imagine if I'm on this side of the river (and I frequently am), Royal China will get many visits from me. 50% of which will be hungover on a Sunday afternoon.

A very nice chinese restaurant located in a very nice place with a great view of the docklands! The food here is very nice and the prices are little exspensive than your usual chinese! The staff are very friendly and welcoming!

The best-positioned of the Royal China chain, beside the Thames at Canary Wharf and with a stunning view of the City three miles upstream. Go early at weekends as there is no booking at lunchtime; instead soak up the sun afterwards with a stroll by the river. But you don't go for the view but for the superb fresh food, and particularly excellent dim sum. But don't forget to have the the chicken's feet in black bean sauce; you won't be disappointed, even if your non-Chinese friends back away.

Interestingly, the waiters here speak Mandarin, while in most of the other Royal China group, they speak Cantonese (ie they are from Hong Kong).

This was a very nice Chinese restaurant experience for me, compared to the others I've had in the UK. The service was excellent, the food tasted great and the atmosphere was very comfortable... especially as I was enjoying the relaxing views of the Thames with my friends. Of course, it's not China, not Hong Kong, but what can you expect? Dim sum was good, if not the best I've had.

I've eaten at Royal China twice now and haven't the faintest idea why everyone sings its praises so highly. Don't get me wrong, it's good at what it does, but after all the hype (I'd been told that this restaurant's the only one that comes close to doing dim sum Hong Kong style), the food was a bit of a disappointment.

I'm not a dim sum aficionado, I'll admit, but I think I've eaten enough of it in Singapore and Hong Kong to tell what's good and what's not, and, as I said, Royal China serves good food, but I wouldn't go out of my way to eat here.

What I would definitely recommend is the crispy noodles which were delicious, as well as the spinach in oyster sauce, which was a little on the salty side, but came nicely presented. Admittedly, it as pricey at £9.60 given it was just, well, spinach! The turnip cake was really nice as well.

I expected a little better for the baked pork chop with chilli sand salt. Not enough chilli and too much salt, I say. The char siew (roasted pork) - my must-have in any dim sum restaurant - was okay, not the best I've had in London.

Service was friendly; they certainly didn't have any issues with my ordering in a combination of Mandarin, Cantonese and English, unlike some of the restaurants in Chinatown.

The view from this restaurant is great. It's located right by the river and just incredibly relaxing.

Top quality Chinese food any time of the day, but it’s my favourite for dim sum. If you’re going at the weekend be prepared for a long-ish wait but it’s definitely worth it. An extensive menu, always prepared to an excellent standard, I keep coming back to Royal China again and again.

‘Alright’ isn’t what you’d expect from Royal China though. Their prices are higher than in Chinatown, but I couldn’t see the difference. Dim sum is such a specialist area that a change of dim sum chef can affect the quality of food at a restaurant, and word spreads fast amongst the local Chinese community when this happens. I like the Canary Wharf location though, so I’m going to give Royal China one more try when it gets warmer, and have some dim sum by the Thames.

I’ve eaten dim sum all over the world and I swear this is the best I’ve ever tasted - better than Hong Kong! You have to queue for a table even if you arrive as they open on a Sunday but it’s so worth the wait. Paper wrapped king prawns are phenomenal, great cheung fun - specials are always worth a try. And it’s SO reasonable! Prices are fantastic. They’re really family friendly too - both my children love eating there. It’s amazing - try it.

One of my favorite places to get Dim sum. The food is fantastic for Dinner as well as Lunch. Staff are efficient, polite and very friendly. Interior is classy and authentic but the toilets are a little dark.

This waterside restaurant has some great views especially around sunset. You may find the prices a little higher than the average Chinese restaurant but let me assure you it is well worth it. The Salt and pepper mixed seafood is a favorite of mine as well as the chicken and jelly fish dish both cooked to perfection.

I would advise to book well in advance for both dinner and lunch.

Since I have never been to China, it was only when I went to the Royal China in Canary Wharf that I realized that all the chinese food I had eaten prior to this occasion was CRAP!
In fact I don’t know how the Royal China’s food compare to the real chinese food in China; I know it’s great food regardless. I know because of the richness of flavors, of tastes, the quality and quantity of ingredients, the freshness of products.
Gold crispy fried chicken; or noodles with ginger; prawns or fish even the traditional sweet and sour (either pork or prawns) dish: everything has a richness of flavors that nowhere had I experienced before. Also the Sunday morning Dim Sum experience. Even the long wait on Sunday morning, when they operate a waiting list first to come - first to be served, didn’t put me off.
To the great foods add a good attentive and quick service, add the nice decor of the restaurant, the comfortable seating and the view of the river. Ideally one should arrive by boat, dock at the Canary Wharf docking station and just get to the chinese food feast!

Am truly surprised how others have rated this place so highly.

Personally, I find the food to be totally unauthentic, with the menu hardly impressive either. The Dim Sum is sometimes served warm at best which is truly out of tradition and the speed at which food is served is horrendously slow. Just to add, the attitude of some of their waiters is poor - sometimes a little too cocky for their own good.

Perhaps a decent view and benefits from being the closest Chinese restaurant from Canary Wharf, but I would say that is about it. For the price charged, there are better options in London.

Excellent top-class Chinese - not cheap but the food is worth the price.

They do some excellent deep fried Noodles, which you can’t get elsewhere, lots of authentic Chinese dishes on the menu. Dim Sum is not bad either.

Good atmosphere inside - again very upmarket.

Decent Chinese food but a bit expensive for what you get. I didn’t like the twice-cooked pork and for some strange reason they chopped off the ends of the bok choy, which was otherwise good. The mabo tofu was the best of what we ordered. It might be worth going back to sample some other dishes but I’m going to try my luck elsewhere first. I think London can do better than a 3 star Chinese joint.

Royal China is one of the upmarket Chinese places outside of China-Town. Located in Canary Wharf if has prices to match but the decor and food are very good.

In short: There is often a wait for a table so it’s good to arrive at a time other people might not. The food is also slightly higher priced that you might expect and if you add drinks it’s going to be a big bill (evening menu). For Dim-Sum it’s very high quality with only a small selection of generic dishes.

I enjoyed this Restaurant a lot, but they need a few more floor staff for the busier periods. In addition there doesn’t appear to be free parking unlike other Chinese restaurants nearby.

I really liked their Tofu and Aubergine dishes, very good. Great place to take a date :)

They could improve the seating layout a bit and the number of staff, but overall it’s a great place.

Now I did a poor review of Waga’s round here, this is totally the other end of the scale, absoloutely fantastic food. Every dish is worth a try. It is not the least expensive meal you’ll ever eat but you really are paying for authentic quality. The cocktails are not a bad price though (£4.50) and if you want to go for broke the Sancerre is very nice (around 28 quid).
The service is not exactly smiley - they do take themselves very seriously but it is one of the best chinese restaurants i have come accross in the capital. The portins are generous though, so be careful not to over order.
I have only been at the weekend or the evening but I believe they do a lunch special which seems very good value, so if you work around here I can recommend stopping by for a bite.

Also the view of the river is pretty special. Be a great place to take visiting parents.

This is a lovely waterside restaurant, decorated in black, royal blue and gold.

I always come here as part of a large group for colleagues’ birthday lunches.

The staff are friendly and the service is super efficient, which is great when you only have an hour for a lunch break.

The menu features safe stand bys like sweet and sour chicken but you have to sample the dim sum. It is superb. They also have a set menu for lunch which represents better value than the “a la carte”, although it’s still pricey enough for it to be an ocassional treat rather than a regular Friday lunch-time outing.

Booking is essential for lunches.