New China Restaurant, Leicester Square, London

Actually, this place has the best Sichuan food in London. You need to order from their menu with a gold cover (not from the one with black cover). I lived in China for a few years, so my taste buds skew towards more authentic Chinese cooking - please don’t blame me if you can’t handle the spice in their beef in extra spicy sauce. But it’s superb!

Also try their hot young chicken, second dish in chicken section, (it’s chicken cubes, nothing scary) and you’ll have to pick your way past the famous Sichuan peppers to get at the chicken…

On the service - in the year that I’ve been going there semi-regularly, I am always greeted with big smiles and they usually comp my drinks. No, the waiters’ English is not the greatest - please smile and be a little patient and the waiters will do their best for you.

Chinatown blah blah blah

Rushed service blah blah blah

Grumpy waitress blah blah blah

Spicy fried chicken/prawn/beef with noodles/rice blah blah blah

I’m being a bit facetious, but since moving to the Leicester Square area recently I’ve overdosed on Chinatown a bit and most of it is all really samey. It’s like they’ve taken a bit of sweet and sour DNA and bred a load of identikit restaurants in a laboratory somewhere. You really have to search for the exceptional places…and unfortunately the New China Restaurant isn’t one of those

I preferred this place when it was a grotty pub with a dive bar underneath. Where did that go?

Not much to say about this place other than that it’s the kind of Chinatown restaurant that you wouldn’t expect to charge for a pot of regular jasmine tea… and that the 2 dim sum dishes I ordered took longer to arrive than the mains ordered by my colleagues. I wasn’t quite happy with the vinegar sauce they brought with the dumplings, and I got a blank stare when I asked for the 'regular’ dipping sauce.. or sweet chilli sauce… or soy sauce then? Ok. Enfin. So I finally settled on getting some soy sauce, but was then brought more vinegar instead. So some miscommunication there, partly even my fault perhaps.

So to sum up, the dumplings were just average at best, the service overall was lacking, and they get awarded 2 stars given the clichéd flicker and look-away we got in response to 'just tap water is fine thank you’. You can do better in Chinatown.

The cashew nut chicken didn’t blow my hair back, neither did the service, half smiles or value for the big bucks buddy. But I am still rather novice in Chinatown’s offerings so I will need to venture further in to have a true and fair comparison.
But from the off-set I would suggest trying another one if you’re in the area. It was about £8 for a main without the portion of rice, a further £3.50 or so. And yes, as CaribQueen pointed out the tea is not a complementary venture, but not bad for an extra squid.

3 stars from me. Service was, hmmmmm, unusual. When i asked for tap water, i thought the waitress was going to slap me. The food came quickly though and was pretty tasty. I can definitely recommend the Chicken in black bean sauce. Lots of seating in this place, so might be a good restaurant to visit on a friday night. But, like CaribQueen says - Chinatown can definitely do better.