Phoenix Palace Chinese Restaurant

I don’t know whether or not I was looking forward to this…afterall, I’ve not had a good yum cha experience in London yet.

Food

The menu was strange, a lot of old favourites were missing, but in a way, it was pleasing to see some new stuff, especially on their “specials” menu. We ordered:

• Prawn dumplings (£2.70) - thick skin, pleasant filling, a bit small though.
• Pork & prawn dumplings (£2.50) - not a strong pork taste at all, it was very different to what you usually get, and not in a bad way
• Prawn & chive dumpling (£2.70) - disappointing and bland, with very bad skin
• Chicken claws in black bean sauce (£2.30) - sauce was a bit too weak, but cooked nicely
• Barbecued pork buns (£2.30) - quite nice, moist and not too fatty
• Vietnamese crispy spring roll (£2.40) - not enough filling and ordinary
• Briny pork croquettes (£2.20) - haven’t had one for ages, but this one was again too small, so there wasn’t enough meat to fill the thick skin.
• Rice pasta roll with prawns (£4) - fresh prawns, but paper rolls were not that smooth
• Rice pasta roll with mashed beef (£3.40) - bland, maybe their soy sauce is not strong enough?
• Baked egg tarts (£2.30) - again, very very small, you can put the whole thing in your mouth in one bite, but at least the pastry was very good.
• Liquid gold custard bun (£3.8) - different and one of my favourites, with the salty and sweet working well together
• Garlic spare ribs cheung fun (£4.5) - the sauce was again too subtle, but the pork was poached very nicely.

Rating - 6

Atmosphere

We arrived quite early for Sunday lunch as we knew there would be a rush later on, and so it was very quiet to begin with. By the time we left, at around 1pm, the party was in full swing. I was happy to see a mixture of Chinese and others, mostly with family, coming along. The décor reflects all other Chinese restaurants really, and they, like most places, don’t have trolleys.

Rating - 2

Service

Most of the staff can’t speak proper Chinese – any dialect, but at least they can speak English, so we did manage to get what we want. The level of service varied, some quite efficient, others woeful. We didn’t get asked about tea for about 5 minutes, and we had to order a waiter over to get some. As it was only 11am and there were not many people, I expected better. Little did we know, about a minute later, another waiter came over asking for tea. We explained that we ordered already, and she actually said to us, in broken Chinese, “Yes, but you better tell me if you actually want to get any tea”! After than that, and the fact that they kept wanting to clear things off our table, service was quite acceptable.

Rating - 2.5

C-factor

This came to £12 p.p and we were reasonably full, but not bursting. Quite acceptable for London.

Rating - 1

Brownie Points - 11.5

Info

3-5 Glentworth Street
London
NW1 5PG
Phone +44 (0) 20 7486 3515
Website